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THE CHURCHMAN'S LIBRARY 

Edited by J. H. Burn, B.D. 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
HERE AND HEREAFTER 



THE CHURCHMAN'S LIBRARY 

EDITED BY 

JOHN HENRY BURN, B.D. 

Examining Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Aberdeen. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY. By W. E. 
Collins, M.A., Professor of Ecclesiastical History, King's College, 
London. Crown 8vo, 35. 6d. [Ready. 

THE CHURCH AND THE SACRAMENTS. By E. T. Green, M.A., 
Professor of Hebrew Theology at St. David's College, Lampeter. 

THE CHURCHMAN'S PRIMER. By G. Harford-Battersby, M.A. 

THE CHURCHMAN'S DAY BOOK. By J. H. Burn, B.D. 

THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN THE COLONIES AND MISSION 
FIELD. By Allan B. Webb, D.D., Assistant-Bishop to the Bishop 
of Moray and Ross. 

HISTORY OF THE PAPACY. By J. P. Whitney, M.A. 

OUR CONTROVERSY WITH ROME. By J. M. Danson, D.D. 

THE LITERARY and HISTORICAL INTEREST of the PRAYER 
BOOK. By John Dowden, D.D., Bishop of Edinburgh. 

A POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
By Angus M. Mackay, B.A. 

A POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
By J. H. Shepherd, M.A. 

AN INTRODUCTION TO TEXTUAL CRITICISM. By A. M. 
Knight, M. A., Fellow and Dean of Gonville and Caius College, Camb. 

SOME OLD TESTAMENT PROBLEMS. By John P. Peters, 
D.D., D.Sc. [Shortly. 

SOME NEW TESTAMENT PROBLEMS. By Arthur Wright, 
M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Queen's College, Cambridge. Crown 
8vo, 6s. [Ready. 

BIBLE REVISION. By J. J. S. Perowne, D.D., Bishop of Worcester. 

DEVOTIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE PAULINE EPISTLES. By 
John Gott, D.D., Bishop of Truro. 

PREACHING. By Frederic Relton, A.K.C. 

ENGLISH HYMNS AND HYMN TUNES. By H. C. Shuttle- 
worth, M.A., Professor of Pastoral and Liturgical Theology, King's 
College, London. 

THE WITNESS OF > ARCHAEOLOGY. By C. J. Ball, M.A., 
Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn. 

ENGLISH ECCLESIOLOGY. By J. N. Comper. 

CONFIRMATION. By H. T. Kingdon, D.D., Bishop of Fredericton. 

INSPIRATION. By Canon Benham, B.D. 

MIRACLES. By Thomas B. Strong, M.A., Student of Christ Church, 
Oxford. 

PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. By V. H. Stanton, D.D., Ely Pro- 
fessor of Divinity, Cambridge. 

EVOLUTION. By Frank B. Jevons, D.Litt., Principal of Bishop 
Hatfield's Hall, Durham. 

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN HERE AND HEREAFTER. By 
Canon Winterbotham, M.A., B.Sc, LL.B. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 

THE GREAT WORLD RELIGIONS FROM A CHRISTIAN STAND- 
POINT. By H. E. J. Bevan, M. A., Gresham Professor of Divinity. 

COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By J. A. MacCulloch, MA. 

ENGLISH ECCLESIASTICAL LAW. By W. Digby Thurnam. 



THE 

KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

HERE AND HEREAFTER 



BY 

RAYNER WINTERBOTHAM, M.A., LL.B., B.Sc. 

CANON OF S. MARY'S CATHEDRAL, EDINBURGH 



NEW YORK 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1898 






^§s 






CONTENTS 



The Kingdom of Heaven . ... 

Hn. The Parable of the Sower; or, of the Good Seed 

III. The Parable of the Tares of the Field 

IV. The Parable of the Mustard Seed 

V. The Parable of the Leaven . 

VI. The Parable of the Hid Treasure . 

VII. The Parable of the Pearl of Great Price 

VIII. The Parable of the Drag-Net 

IX. The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant 

X. The Parable of the Labourers 

XI. The Two Parables of the Vineyard 

XII. The Parable of the King's Supper . 

XIII. The Three Parables of St. Matthew xxv 

XIV. The Parable of the Ten Virgins 
XV. The Parable of the Talents 

XVI. The Parable of the Sheep and Goats 



PAGS 
I 

H 
33 
52 
70 

77 
90 
103 
in 
121 
129 
137 
MS 
166 

174 
181 



EXCURSUS 

I. On some Sayings about the Kingdom of Heaven 219 
II. On Suffering as a Note of the Kingdom of 

Heaven . . ... 234 

III. On the Destiny of the Lost . . . 241 

IV. Upon the Circumscribed Character of "The 

Kingdom " in our Lord's Teaching . . 258 



PREFACE 

T N the following pages will be found an attempt 
-*- to estimate once more our Lord's teaching about 
the Kingdom of Heaven. It is an arduous under- 
taking, in which any large measure of success can 
scarcely be looked for. But the present time offers 
some advantages which may seem to warrant the 
taking it in hand. We have shaken ourselves clear 
of certain conventional ways of treating our Lord's 
discourses which greatly spoilt their effectiveness 
and even obscured their meaning. We do not in 
the least desire to treat the Bible like any other 
book, or to rank our Lord with other Teachers of 
mankind. But we see quite clearly that being made 
Man, and speaking to His hearers in their own 
language, it was of necessity that He should so 
order His words as to produce the effect which He 
desired upon their minds. He spoke indeed as 
never man spake, but all the same He spoke as 
Man to men. He used a style which was distinc- 
tively Eastern, constantly figurative, not infrequently 



viii PREFACE 

hyperbolical. Parables, proverbial sayings, figures of 
speech, prophetical formulas adapted from the Old 
Testament, were constantly on His lips. To object 
to this fact, as if it were in any conceivable sense 
derogatory or surprising, would only be to object to 
His being Incarnate when and where He was. To 
ignore this fact in interpreting His language, is to 
set aside the Will of God for one's private fancies. 
It pleased the Father that the Incarnate Word 
should think the thoughts and speak the language 
of a Jew of Palestine nineteen centuries ago. Given 
the Incarnation, nothing else indeed was possible. 
The clearest recognition of this fact does not 
diminish in the least from the reverence due to our 
Lord's words. On the contrary it adds to that 
reverence because it makes it more intelligent. But 
it does affect our interpretation of those words, when 
we understand that they are very far removed in 
literary character from the ordinary prose of modern 
Western life. It is a fact that our Lord desired and 
designed to impress upon the minds of His followers 
certain great ideas connected with His Kingdom. 
It is a fact that He had to use whatever language 
was then and there best adapted (or most available) 
for producing the desired effect. It is a fact that 
He actually used the language of the Prophet and 



PREFACE ix 

the Poet, not that of the essayist or annalist, not 
that of the modern moralist or preacher. It is only 
when we recognize these facts that we can con- 
template our Lord's teaching in anything like the 
true light. It is only when we recognize the limita- 
tions which our Lord set upon His teaching, when 
we cease to demand of Him definite predictions and 
dogmatic utterances, that our minds become really 
open to the splendid effectiveness of that teaching. 
There never was anything like it — save here and 
there when His Spirit spake by the Prophets of 
Israel. There never will be anything like it again. 
To treat it in the hopelessly prosaic and pedantic 
(spirit in which it has been so often treated is (with 
the best intentions) to do Him a dreadful wrong. 
If anyone thinks the following pages chargeable 
with too much freedom of treatment, or with too 
wide departure from conventional ideas as to what 
our Lord must have meant, he is only asked to 
weigh each case on its merits, and to credit the 
author with as devout a reverence for the Incarnate 
Word as he has himself. It is agreed that it is not 
in all cases easy to know what our Lord really 
meant. It is agreed that it has always been an 
open question (and a question very ill understood 
by many) how far the elements of poetry and of 



x PREFACE 

figure and of picture-language enter into our Lord's 
discourse. If the author is convinced that these 
elements are in fact far larger and more extensive 
than is generally allowed, he may be wrong — but 
he is not therefore to be accused of want of rever- 
ence or want of faith. Nothing is further from his 
mind than to take up a negative attitude towards 
our Lord's teaching. If on the contrary he shall 
have done anything to bring out the magnificent 
and astonishing effectiveness of that teaching, and 
to free it from entanglements of misunderstanding, 
then his object will have been gained. The effort 
is probably worth very little : whatever it is worth, 
it is offered to Him. 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 
HERE AND HEREAFTER 

i. 

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

THERE is a very marked tendency in the present 
day to get back to our Lord's own teaching on 
platters of religion. This need not be either doubted 
or deplored. The tendency may itself take an ex- 
aggerated form, like every movement which is largely 
prompted by hostility to established modes of think- 
ing. It is in point of fact often completely vitiated 
by prejudice and dislike : but in itself the tendency 
is hopeful. It is sufficiently evident that in many 
ways a great deal has been read into the Master's 
teaching which does not belong to it. It is natural 
and right that those who revere Him most should 
wish to strip off these accretions, and to realize as 
distinctly as possible what He Himself really taught 
about religion. In order to share this wish, it is not 
at all necessary to set up the authority of the Master 
in any kind of opposition against the authority of 
the apostles to whom He promised the gift of the 



2 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

Spirit to guide them into all truth : or against the 
authority of the Church which is the pillar and 
ground of the truth. Theoretically, there can be no 
such opposition, for then would the Spirit and the 
truth be divided against itself. Practically, whatever 
opposition may appear will fall to be explained by 
some mistake on our part. We have misread the 
Apostles, or misjudged the voice of the Church. We 
may leave that for the present, convinced that no 
true development of Christian teaching (whatever its 
degree of inspiration) can gainsay the teaching of 
the Master or be (in any sense) inconsistent with it. 
It is true then that in point of fact the appeal is 
constantly being made to what our Lord taught on 
certain subjects ; it is certainly lawful to ask our- 
selves what that teaching really comes to. And this 
may be especially asserted with regard to a subject 
which He made peculiarly His own, and as it were 
reserved for His own explication. Everyone knows 
that He spoke very often about the Kingdom of 
Heaven, that it was a favourite topic of His, that He 
chose to dwell upon it in His public teaching in a 
very emphatic way, that it commended itself to Him 
as a heading or title under which He could most 
conveniently and profitably arrange His teachings 
concerning those things which it most concerned us 
to understand. It was His mission to proclaim, to 
found, that Kingdom. It was the Kingdom which 
interested Him, and in which He sought to interest 
us. It certainly represented something very real and 
practical to Him, and yet so inclusive that whatever 
was not of it was nothing worth. If the phrase 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 3 

" Kingdom of Heaven " called up in our minds what 
it called up in His — nothing more and nothing less 
— we should be wise indeed ! It is, however, evident 
that to this wisdom there is no short cut. To this 
particular phrase there is no paraphrase, no precise 
equivalent in any language. No doubt the phrase 
itself implies something. It takes for granted the 
fact that the world is in some sense alienated from 
God. It takes for granted that amidst this general 
alienation there is a process of recovery which has 
God for its author ; a limited sphere within which He 
is working in a peculiar way, ruling and overruling, 
to bring men back to Him. So we cannot doubt 
that in the Divine thought this Kingdom has an 
absolute unity and identity. In human thought and 
speech, however, it is far otherwise. The moment 
we look at our Lord's teaching about the Kingdom 
we are struck with the fact that it is extraordinarily 
varied and discursive. We are confronted with a 
number of outline sketches so diverse one from 
another as to have almost nothing in common. Our 
first difficulty is to conceive how similitudes so 
apparently inconsistent can be true likenesses of 
the same divine institution. Our first lesson is one 
of wide-mindedness. It is indeed possible that as 
we go on we shall perceive some sort of unity, rising 
through the partial and manifold to the one and the 
complete. It is also possible that this is not to be 
realized here and now. At any rate we must be 
content with any amount of seeming incongruity to 
start with, and refuse to be tempted by that forced 
exegesis which has for its aim at any cost to 



4 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

"reconcile" scripture with scripture, or scripture as it 
is with our conception of scripture as it ought to be. 
A bitter experience has taught us both what this kind 
of treatment can do, and what it cannot do. On the 
face of things it is omnipotent. It is always possible 
by means of glosses and explanations to put such a 
face upon any scripture as that it shall at least be 
dumb and not give the lie to our reading of any 
other scripture. But in the end it is impotent. It 
never satisfies people who think. The written record 
remains, infinitely patient indeed of arbitrary treat- 
ment and violence, but always bearing its own 
witness, and always finding some ears open to that 
witness. Our first lesson then is one of compre- 
hensiveness. The Kingdom of Heaven in our Lord's 
presentation of it is like unto a dozen different things 
— so different that theology can find no common 
measure for them. Yet we cannot doubt that the 
truth of the Kingdom is to be found not in the 
exclusive contemplation of any one or two of these 
aspects, but in giving due place and full importance 
to every aspect in its turn. There are those who are 
in favour of very short formulas in religion : they 
cannot be in harmony with our Lord's teaching in 
the Gospels. There are those who insist much upon 
the simplicity of the Gospel. They are right in their 
way, but they need to recognize that our Lord's 
teaching was simple because each picture that He 
held up was so clear and so incisive, not at all 
because the pictures were the same or were even 
alike. Simplicity must never be confounded with 
narrowness of view, or with failure to grasp the 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 5 

many co-ordinate and complemental elements in 
our Lord's teaching, and in the teaching of scripture 
generally. If that teaching had been " simple" in 
the sense often claimed for it, He would doubtless 
have found one parable in which He might express 
the truth of the Kingdom. It is evident that He 
could not do this : the many-sidedness of the King- 
dom forbade it. The parables of the Kingdom are 
like pictures or photographs of some great edifice 
taken from points of view so various that they 
bear almost no resemblance to one another. Any 
one or two, taken apart from the rest, would be 
erroneous because fatally incomplete. And yet each 
is absolutely true in itself, and its truth is sub- 
stantiated by Christian history and Christian ex- 
perience, so far as these have gone. What we have 
do do, therefore, if we wish to understand the King- 
dom of Heaven as our Lord thought of it, is to take 
all these parables as they are, to place ourselves at 
their varying standpoints, and to realize that aspect 
of the Kingdom which is presented in each. 

Of set parables concerning the Kingdom of 
Heaven there are fourteen in St. Matthew, and 
one (additional) in St. Mark. Pre-eminent amongst 
these are the two great series of seven parables in 
St. Matthew xiii., and of three in St. Matthew xxv. 
Besides these there is a large number of sayings 
about the kingdom, especially in St. Luke, which are 
of the greatest importance. It must be evident to 
every careful reader that the Gospels are full of 
sayings which only need working up in order to be 
called parables. They are the raw material of 



6 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

parable. They are pregnant sayings, illustrations, 
similitudes, which the evangelists in some cases 
actually call parables (as in St. Luke v. 36, St. 
Mark xiii. 28), but which are not in fact elaborated 
into the word-picture to which we restrict the name. 
For affirming the distinctive features of the Kingdom 
they may be equally important, though not nearly so 
striking. We must try not to lose sight of these, 
while we give chief attention to the two great groups 
of parables in St. Matthew's Gospel. It may indeed 
be argued that the former of these groups is an 
artificial one, that they have only been gathered 
together here for convenience. But our Lord's 
question in St. Matthew xiii. 51, "Have ye under- 
stood all these things ? " seems to imply that all 
these parables belong together, and need to be 
taken in connection with one another in order tr 
be properly understood. Of course we cannot take 
the apostles' answer, "Yea, Lord," as representing 
the fact. It measured their ignorance rather than 
their knowledge — their ignorance of all the wisdom 
which lies within these parables, which nineteen 
centuries have failed to exhaust. But all the same 
our Lord's words serve to gather together all these 
parables of the Kingdom, and to present them to us 
as an object of devout study in their unity as well as 
in their variety. 

Before taking up the detailed examination of these 
parables, however, it will be well to point out what 
the time relations of the Kingdom of Heaven are, in 
our Lord's use of the phrase. It has relations with 
past, present, and future. Where, for instance, our 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 7 

Lord says that "the children of the Kingdom shall 
be cast out," 1 it is manifest from the context that He 
is speaking of Jews, who by reason of their privileged 
position under the old dispensation might naturally 
claim the freedom of the Kingdom more than any 
others. Nor does He exactly disallow that claim. 
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob do belong to the 
Kingdom, and are prominent in it. 2 But these "sons 
of the Kingdom," as they are by hereditary right, 
must nevertheless be excluded since they have no 
real congruity with it. The Kingdom of which our 
Lord thought had therefore a sort of preliminary (or 
anticipatory) and partial existence in the past, in 
that Old Testament economy which He came at 
once to fulfil and to supersede. 

But it is certain that this existence of the King- 
dom in the past has but a small and casual place in 
our Lord's teaching, and it is only necessary to point 
ijt out for the sake of completeness. Generally speak- 
ing He is at pains to emphasize the fact that the 
Kingdom has only come with Himself, and is only 
now available. Even John the Baptist, to whom He 
pays so high a tribute of praise, is not (properly 
speaking) within the Kingdom. 3 Close as he stands 
to the Messiah, he does not himself belong to the 
Christian order of things, and so remains inferior to 
many commonplace people in point of position and 
privilege. To be fairly within the Kingdom of 
Heaven it is not enough to be even the forerunner 
of our Lord : one must be distinctly a follower of 
His. Habitually our Lord speaks of the Kingdom 

1 Matt viii. 12. a Ibid, 11. 3 Matt. xi. 11. 



8 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

in the present tense; "no doubt the Kingdom of 
God is come upon you " ; " the Kingdom of God is 
within you " (or perhaps " among you "). x That 
manner of speech may be said to be usual with 
Him. But at the same time He speaks of it as 
future, and that emphatically. Thus He does not 
encourage the popular idea that "the Kingdom of 
God should immediately appear," 2 and He teaches 
the disciples to pray " Thy Kingdom come." 3 Con- 
cerning some of them He asserts that they " shall 
not taste of death until they see the Kingdom of 
God," 4 and He tells the twelve at the Last Supper 
that He " will not drink from henceforth of the fruit 
of the vine, until the Kingdom of God shall come." 5 
It is obvious that this emphatic reference to the 
future does not in itself raise any difficulty, any 
more than that other and slighter reference to the 
past. If, as we should naturally suppose, the King- 
dom is essentially a state of things introduced into 
the world by our Lord, it would necessarily have its 
more or less shadowy anticipations in the past ; still 
more necessarily its historical developments in the 
future. The Jewish " children of the Kingdom " did 
really possess the earthly counterpart of the heavenly 
reality of that Kingdom. When we pray "Thy 
Kingdom come," we mean " come in its perfect 
fulness." Those who were to survive (no doubt 
very unexpectedly and by the singular favour of 
God) to "see the Kingdom of God," were (as St. 

1 Luke xvii. 21. 2 Luke xix. II. 

3 Matt. vi. io; Luke ix. 2. 4 Luke ix. 27. 

5 Luke xxii. 18. 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 9 

Mark indeed expresses it, ix. 1) to "see the King- 
dom of God come with power" i.e., in some startling 
development of its boundless influence for good. 
Those who are to drink the cup of blessing new 
with their Lord in the Kingdom of God will drink 
it (whatever that may mean) "in the regeneration," 
i.e., in the age to come when the Kingdom shall 
have reached its final stage of absolute perfection. 
There is nothing whatever arbitrary in this, because 
the coming of the Kingdom is so often and so clearly 
thought of as being gradual and progressive. In the 
one parable peculiar to St. Mark (iv. 26-9) there is 
no other point than this. Gradually, and even in- 
sensibly, while men pursue their ordinary avocations, 
and the earth swings round and round upon its axis, 
the seed is growing and ripening towards maturity. 
When that maturity is finally reached, there will be 
no delay in reaping the fruits ; but until that hour is 

,)come it will just go on growing, ripening, developing, 
maturing, or by whatever other word one may choose 

Vto describe the evolution of the Kingdom. No one 
has ever made anything else of the parable. But in 
this simple and obvious sense it is perfect. There 
are moments in the growth of the corn when men 
remark with a certain surprise on the change which 
has come over its appearance. As a rule they pay 
no heed to it. But it goes on growing none the faster 
for their regard, and none the slower for their dis- 
regard. So is the Kingdom of God, always past 
(since He "left not Himself without witness from 
the beginning" 1 ), always present (since "here and 

1 Acts xiv. 17. 



io THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

now" is the law of man's responsibility), always 
future (since "the Kingdom" is also "the patience 
of Jesus Christ" 1 ). 

Moreover it is entirely after our Lord's manner to 
use words and phrases with a singular absoluteness 
and absence of qualification, leaving it to His hearers 
to explain them by the context, or to modify them 
by complemental sayings. That is the case in things 
far more important and difficult than time-relations. 
It should not then (and would not, apart from pre- 
conceived theories) cause us any surprise, or give us 
any trouble, if we find Him speaking simply and 
absolutely of "the Kingdom," whether He was at 
the moment thinking of it as past, present, or future, 
in its anticipation, in its essential character, or in its 
development. This being so, it is clear that in con- 
sidering any particular parable of the Kingdom w$ 
must carefully interrogate Christian history as to any 
light which that history can throw upon it, since, 
every distinctive feature of the Kingdom must leave 
unmistakable marks upon the course of events. No 
one doubts that Christianity has profoundly affected 
the progress of affairs from the first, and no one 
doubts that the Kingdom of Heaven stands in close 
relationship to what we call Christianity, although 
much which is included under that name is not of 
the Kingdom. Christian history therefore should 
help us very much, both positively by suggesting 
the true line of interpretation, and negatively by 
barring the false. We need, however, to rely upon 
broad and general views of history only, and not 
1 Rev. i. 9. 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN u 

upon narrow or detailed applications. It is not 
necessary to ask whether our Lord had before His 
mind the whole sequence of the future of this world. 
It is enough to know (as we really may know for 
certain) that if He had He never made the slightest 
use of that knowledge. Beyond the destruction of 
Jerusalem (so often depicted by the prophets of 
Israel) He never foretold one single event in history, 
and even those few prognostications that He made 
of the fate which awaited some of His disciples 1 
were couched in terms of such studied vagueness 
that only the event could determine what they 
meant. This reticence was no doubt intentional, 
and all really reverent minds will hold it in abso- 
lute respect. Practically, our Lord predicted nothing 
in the way of what we call occurrences. What He 
did was to forecast certain lines along which His 
Kingdom would develop, because these lines corres- 
ponded to its essential features. It is in this respect, 
!nd only this, that we must seek for light from 
Christian history. To anticipate very briefly what 
*/ill appear further on, it may be granted that as 
the parable of the sower deals primarily with the 
conditions of the apostolic age, so the parable of the 
tares is primarily concerned with such spurious imita- 
tions of Christianity as formed a very prominent 
feature of the second century. The parable of the 
mustard-seed depicts the surprisingly swift growth 
of Christianity as a corporate institution, while that of 
the leaven sets forth as clearly the far wider exten- 
sion of its characteristic ideas. All that corresponds 
1 Matt. xx. 23 j John xxi. 18, 22. 



12 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

markedly in a broad sense to the actual course 
of things, but it cannot be carried any further. We 
might infer that our Lord's vision of the future did 
not extend further, or pass more into detail, than 
that. Such an inference would be precarious. But 
we are bound to treat the parables as if it were true. 
Whatever limits He Himself imposed upon His 
utterances we must absolutely respect : and when 
history shows clearly that such limits existed, we 
must conclude that He Himself imposed them. 
That is the only reasonable or reverent line to take, 
even if it cut the ground from beneath a vast edifice 
of assertion or of speculation. To this limited use 
of Christian history may be added an almost .un- 
limited use of Christian experience, since the King- 
dom fulfils and unfolds itself in and for the individual 
quite as much as in and for the community. The 
parables, e.g., of the hid treasure and of the pearl 
are obviously to be expounded from the records of 
the inner life : like certain other parables of the; 
Kingdom, they absolutely decline to concern them/- 
selves with Christians in general, they will only take 
men one by one in the most personal way possible. 

One more "foreword." No attempt will be made 
to go behind the Gospel narratives. They will be 
taken as they stand. And this, not out of any 
desire to judge others or to limit their liberty, but 
out of conviction that the path in that direction leads 
to nothing. If a hundred men started off to cross a 
level and featureless moorland on a dark and wind- 
less night, when the moon did not shine, and the few 
stars visible could not be recognized, the value of 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 13 

their explorations would be nil. Their devious 
course until the dawn would be determined only 
by the action and reaction of the unimportant and 
superficial inequalities of the surface upon their 
personal idiosyncrasies. No conceivable value would 
attach to the result. Equally useless, because equally 
casual and unaccountable, is the blind guessing of 
those who wish to go behind the Gospels. Doubt- 
less they form opinions, but they have not any data 
to form them on. The Gospels are in possession. 
They have been in possession from a date which 
every fresh discovery tends to put nearer and nearer 
to the apostolic days. No one who really believes 
in the love and wisdom of the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ can lightly believe that the Gospels are 
not authentic for all practical purposes. 



II. 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER; 
OR, OF THE GOOD SEED 



St. Matt. xiii. 3-8. 

Behold, a sower 
went forth to sow : 
And when he sowed 
some seeds fell by 
the way side, and 
the fowls came and 
devoured them up : 
Some fell upon 
stony places, where 
they had not much 
earth : and forth- 
with they sprung 
up, because they 
had no deepness of 
earth : And when 
the sun was up, 
they were scorched: 
and because they 
had no root, they 
withered away. And 
some fell among 
thorns; and the 
thorns sprung up, 
and choked them : 
But other fell into 
good ground, and 
brought forth fruit, 
some an hundredfold, 
some sixtyfold, some 
thirtyfold. 



St. Mark iv. 3-8 

Hearken ; behold, 
there went out a sower 
to sow : And it came 
to pass, as he sowed, 
some fell by the way 
side, and the fowls of 
the air came and de- 
voured it up. And 
some fell on stony 
ground, where it had 
not much earth ; and 
immediately it sprang 
up, because it had no 
depth of earth : But 
when the sun was up, 
it was scorched ; and 
because it had no root, 
itwitheredaway. And 
some fell among 
thorns, and the thorns 
grew up and choked 
it, and it yielded no 
fruit. And other fell 
on good ground, and 
did yield fruit that 
sprang up and in- 
creased, and brought 
forth, some thirty, and 
some sixty, and some 
an hundred. 

14 



St. Luke viii. 5-8. 

A sower went out 
to sow his seed: and 
as he sowed, some 
fell by the way side ; 
and it was trodden 
down, and the fowls 
of the air devoured it. 
And some fell upon 
a rock ; and as soon 
as it was sprung up, 
it withered away, be- 
cause it lacked mois- 
ture. And some fellH 
among thorns ; an|l 
the thorns sprang up 
with it, and choked 
it. And other fell 
on good ground, and 
sprang up, and bare 
fruit an hundredfold. 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 15 



St. Matt. xiii. 18-23. 

Hear ye therefore 
the parable of the 
sower. When any 
one heareth the word 
of the kingdom, and 
understandeth it not, 
then cometh the 
wicked one % and 
catcheth away that 
which was sown in 
his heart. This is 
he which received 
seed by the way 
side. But he that 
received the seed 
into stony places, the 
sam* is he that 
heareth the word, 
and anon with joy 
receiveth it : Yet 
hatn he not root in 
himself, but dureth 
for a while: for when 
tribulation or persecu- 
tidki ariseth because 
of the word, by and 
by he is offended. 
He also that re- 
ceived seed among 
the thorns is he 
that heareth the 
word ; and the care 
of this world, and 
the deceitfulness of 
riches, choke the 
word, and he be- 
come t h unfruitful. 
But he that re- 
ceived seed into the 
good ground is he 
that heareth the 



St. Mark iv. 14-20. 

The sower soweth 
the word. And these 
are they by the way 
side, where the word 
is sown ; but when 
they have heard, 
Satan cometh imme- 
diately, and taketh 
away the word that 
was sown in their 
hearts. And these 
are they likewise 
which are sown on 
stony ground ; who, 
when they have heard 
the word, immediately 
receive it with glad- 
ness ; and have no 
root in themselves, 
and so endure but 
for a time : after- 
ward, when afflic- 
tion or persecution 
ariseth for the word's 
sake, immediately 
they are offended. 
And these are they 
which are sown 
among thorns ; such 
as hear the word. 
And the cares of this 
world, and the 
deceitfulness of 
riches, and the lusts 
of other things enter- 
ing in, choke the 
word, and it becometh 
unfruitful. And these 
are they which are 
sown on good ground; 
such as hear the 



St. Luke viii. 11-15. 

Now the parable is 
this : The seed is 
the word of God. 
Those by the way 
side are they that 
hear ; then cometh 
the devil, and 
taketh away the 
word out of their 
hearts, lest they 
should believe and 
be saved. They on 
the rock are they> 
which, when they 
hear, receive the 
word with joy; and 
these have no root, 
which for a while 
believe, and in time 
of temptation fall 
away. And that 
which fell among 
thorns are they, 
which, when they 
have heard, go forth, 
and are choked with 
cares and riches and 
pleasures of this life, 
and bring no fruit to 
perfection. But that 
on the good ground 
are they, which in 
an honest and good 
heart, having heard 
the word, keep #, 
and bring forth fruit 
with patience. 



16 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

St. Matt. xiii. 18-23. St. Mark iv. 14-20. 

word, and under- word, and receive ?V, 
standeth it; which and bring forth fruit, 
also beareth fruit, some thirtyfold, some 
and bringeth forth, sixty, and some an 
some an hundredfold, hundred, 
some sixty, some 
thirty. 

THE PARABLE OF 

THE GOOD SEED GROWING SECRETLY 

St. Mark iv. 26-29. 

And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast 
seed into the ground ; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and 
the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the 
earth bringeth forth fruit of herself ; first the blade, then the ear, after 
that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is ripe immediately 
he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come. 

THAT the first and foremost of all agricultural 
operations should have furnished the Saviour 
with much of the imagery of His parables is natural 
enough. The operation itself was familiar to every- 
body, and almost equally familiar were many of tlie 
sentiments and applications which readily suggest 
themselves. That which comes of the sowing — the 
fields of harvest — is so utterly unlike the sowing, so 
far away, and yet so confidently expected. And side 
by side with the general certainty of harvest — of the 
special harvest which the sowing warrants — lies the 
extraordinary uncertainty of the event in the case of 
the particular plant or field. 

There are four parables of sowing which concern 
the Kingdom of Heaven. That of the mustard seed, 
however, we may put aside, because it only belongs 
to this group in appearance. It is in fact a story, not 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 17 

of the sower, but of the gardener, and has an entirely 
different significance. There remain as true parables 
of sowing the first two in St. Matthew xiii., and the 
one in St. Mark iv. 26-29. This last has been already 
considered. Its one point — so very simple, and yet 
of such profound interest — is the silent persistent 
growth, unhastening, unhindered, of Christian in- 
fluences, towards the inevitable hour of perfect ripe- 
ness. There is in it a suggestion that these influences 
may seem to be left strangely to themselves, as if 
they needed no supervision. And that is true in this 
respect, that they are vital influences and are bound 
to go on growing and maturing according to the law 
of development which belongs to their nature. They 
may be the better for man's solicitude, but they do 
not depend upon it. 

The parable which governs the others — which rules 
the interpretation of them — is undoubtedly that 
commonly called "the parable of the sower." This 
is, ; however, a misnomer, because nothing whatever 
turns upon the personality of him that bears the 
seed. In the parable, as in real life, this is un- 
important. When the Revised Version rightly enough 
substitutes " the sower " for " a sower," it nevertheless 
puts the reader on a wrong track. "The sower" is 
simply the man who, as a matter of fact, is employed 
in this humble task. It may be indeed our Lord ; 
it may be St. Peter or St. John ; it may as well be 
Judas ; St. Paul — or those who preached Christ even 
of envy and strife. What matters is not the sower, 
but the seed. No doubt there is a skill and careful- 
ness in sowing ; but that is not any part of the 
c 



18 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

parable. It is the seed upon which everything turns 
from the first, and after that it is the strange and 
varied fortunes of that seed, with which the sower 
has nothing to do. It will be as well to remember 
that, in an age which takes an unwearied delight in 
discussing and comparing the personal characteristics 
and peculiarities of preachers. 

Now the seed is " the word " (St. Mark), " the word 
of the Kingdom " (St. Matthew), " the word of God " 
(St. Luke). By these expressions is signified no 
doubt that teaching about divine and eternal things 
which is proper and (for the most part) peculiar to 
Christianity. It cannot possibly be doubted that our 
Lord thought of His own teaching — the substance 
of which is recorded in the Gospels — as the word of 
God. " My mother and My brethren are these 
which hear the word of God, and do it." He never 
showed the slightest consciousness that the seed 
which He sowed as the word of God was an im- 
perfectly-developed seed, having no vitality, no living 
principle in itself. It is certain that the word of 
God as preached by the Apostles never discarded, 
never superseded, any part of our Lord's personal 
teaching. In one notable instance indeed, that of 
St. James, it simply reproduced it. You understand 
the Epistle of St. James only when you hear in it 
just the echoes of the old Galilean teaching of the 
Son of Man in those blessed days of His visible 
presence. Just thus, we may say to ourselves, had 
the Master spoken on some well -remembered 
occasion in Bethsaida or in Capernaum, turning 
as He spoke now to the simple country folk, now 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 19 

to the Scribes and Pharisees who came down from 
Jerusalem. 

On the other hand St. Paul expressly identifies the 
word of God with " the word of the Cross," l and this 
raises questions which have to be faced. What does 
the Apostle mean by this expression 6 \6yo<$ rod 
Xravpov, and in what precise relation does it stand 
to the word of the Kingdom as preached by our 
Lord ? It may be as well to glance first of all at an 
explanation which is worthless enough in itself, but 
is worth a good deal as a specimen of its kind. Not 
long ago a fragment of the "Gospel according to 
Peter" was discovered, and in it occurs the story of 
what we may call the Resurrection of the Cross. 
On the third day, very early, a cross of supernatural 
size is seen to issue from the sepulchre, escorted by 
two gigantic angels. It has occurred to someone to 
assert that when St. Paul uses the expression 6 \6y09 
rod Uravpov, he refers to this " story of the Cross," 
this ridiculous legend. It is enough for anybody 
who knows his Bible to recall the sayings of St. Paul 
about the Cross, how evidently spiritual and mystical 
the Cross was to him, how entirely the mere physical 
facts and circumstances of the Crucifixion sank into 
insignificance as compared with the enormous issues 
of spiritual religion which lay behind and beneath 
the Crucifixion. It is not enough to say that the 
assertion was false. It is clear that it could not have 
been made by anyone who had the least sympathy 
with or insight into the thoughts and feelings of St. 

1 1 Cor. i. 18, R.V. ; the A.V. " preaching of the Cross" is 
absolutely unwarrantable. 



20 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

Paul as manifested in his letters. Even a very 
limited insight, and that purely intellectual, would 
have saved a man from making such a stupid 
blunder. But it is only a rather crass specimen of 
a multitude of assertions which are constantly being 
made about the origins of Christianity, wildly im- 
probable guesses based upon nothing but an eager 
and sometimes virulent dislike of the common 
belief, yet often accepted for no better reason 
than that they are at once surprising and con- 
fident. 

When St. Paul identifies the word of God with 
the word of the Cross, he means no doubt that in 
his preaching Christ crucified was the central figure. 
One knows that it was so. "O foolish Galatians," 
he cries, " who did bewitch you, before whose eyes 
Jesus Christ was openly set forth, crucified?" 1 
" Openly set forth " is a lame translation. Bishop 
Lightfoot renders it "placarded," and no doubt 
rightly. No one will suspect for an instant that 
the Apostle stuck up flaming "posters" of the 
Crucifixion. Nothing is more impossible. But he 
uses the word which other people used for the 
posting up of public decrees and notices. He had 
so preached Christ crucified that the picture of the 
dying Saviour lived before the mind's eye of the 
Galatians. As they listened they were again and 
again transported to Calvary, and beheld the dying 
of the Lord Jesus. That is clear. But we cannot 
read St. Paul's letters and doubt that the "word 
of the Cross" means more than that to him. "The 
1 Gal. iii. i. 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 21 

Cross" is to him the verbal symbol, not only of a 
crucified Saviour, but of a crucified self. By it he 
is crucified to the world and the world to him. He 
is constantly assuming that all good Christians died, 
were crucified, with Christ in a very real sense. 
Doubtless there is something mystical in this teach- 
ing which it passes man's wit to explain, which only 
faith can appropriate and experience make clear. 
But yet no one doubts that this truth has a moral 
or ethical side of the gravest import. The "word 
of the Cross" means also the teaching (so in- 
extricably mixed up by the Apostle with the 
teaching about the atoning Death) that all who will 
be saved by Christ must die to sin and die to self, 
and rise to a new life of unselfishness and devotion. 
Now here we see in a moment that St. Paul's word 
of the Cross is our Lord's word of the Kingdom. 
This was historically the first meaning of the Cross. 
As our Saviour Himself speaks of it, it is we who 
are to take it up and follow Him. " He that taketh 
not his Cross," He said, "is not worthy of Me." 1 
Surprising, if we were not so used to it, that He 
speaks of the Cross for us before He speaks of the 
Cross for Himself! No possible "return to the 
Cross " can ever alter that fact, nor must we shrink 
from honestly giving full value to it. The word of 
God in the mouth of the Master and in the mouth 
of the Apostle was "good seed," seed which was 
fitted by its inherent power of life to spring up 
and bring forth fruit for the harvest of eternity. 
It was good seed, because it contained within itself 

1 Matt. x. 38. 



22 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

the word of the Cross, the Cross for all men, the 
Cross as an all-embracing principle of self-sacrifice 
and self-renunciation, a principle which was in the 
supreme sense illustrated, confirmed, established by 
the Death at Calvary. We need not think that this 
is the last word about the Atonement. Far from 
it. That last word will never be spoken. When 
the Son of God delivers Himself up to death for 
us men and for our salvation, the effects of it will 
be so prodigious, the very meaning of it so far 
beyond our powers of thought, that we shall never 
think we have exhausted that meaning, or wish to 
set limits to those effects. Moreover, we are per- 
fectly aware that our Lord could only speak in hints 
and dark sayings about His approaching Passion. 
Still it remains true that if we seek for that which 
is common to the teaching of Christ and of St. Paul, 
we find it above all in two elements. The first is 
the extraordinary and (upon any but the Christian 
theory) inexplicable prominence given to the Person 
of our Lord. In the Gospels quite as much as the 
Epistles it is He that is evermore proposed to men, 
not merely as their Exemplar and Teacher, but 
as the supreme object of their loyalty, devotion, 
obedience, worship. The second is "the Cross" in 
the broad sense above referred to. 

In the Gospels then we have Christ and the Cross. 
In the Epistles Christ and His Cross, because now 
He has not only perfectly illustrated, but adequately 
fulfilled this eternal and Divine principle, and made 
the Cross His own for ever. But Christ and the 
Cross, whether the two thoughts have as yet im- 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 23 

perfectly united, or whether they have absolutely 
coalesced, make up the vital principle in the good 
seed. It remains then to affirm that Christ and His 
Cross must not abolish Christ and the Cross, for 
they are not contrary the one to the other. People 
have wondered why the " word of the Cross " seemed 
to have lost its power, and did not see that its 
power was gone because there was no Cross in it 
for him that preached or for them that heard. Men 
go forth to the heathen and say, " The Son of God 
died for you ; believe on Him and all will be well 
with you " ; and they are surprised that the message 
falls almost flat, and that they get no converts but 
such as they pay for one way or another. That is 
not the word of the Cross as our Lord taught it, 
or St. Paul. In our Lord's mouth it was, " He that 
taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is 
not worthy of Me,"i In St. Paul's, "I die daily"; 2 
"I am crucified with Christ"; 3 "If we died with 
Him, we shall also live with Him." 4 To preach 
Christ without self-sacrifice and self-devotion, with- 
out a veritable surrender of what the natural man 
loves and longs for, is a blunder so fatal that it takes 
all the life out of it. " The word of the Cross " 
means of course all the love of Christ crucified for 
us, but it means also all the love of Christ crucified 
in us. It means the fundamental truth so incisively 
taught — so paradoxically taught even — by the Master, 
that you must lose your life (or soul) in order to 
gain it. How amazing it is, by the way, that this 

1 Matt. x. 38. 2 I Cor. xv. 31. 

3 Gal. ii. 20. 4 Rom. vi. 8. 



24 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

great saying in St. Matthew xvi. 25, 26 should have 
been utterly changed and corrupted for so many 
millions of English-speaking Christians ever since 
the Reformation ! When our translators rendered 
the same Greek word by "life" in verse 25, and by 
"soul" in verse 26, they did not mean to deal dis- 
honestly with the word of God ; but what they 
did was absolutely unwarrantable, and has been 
disastrous beyond expression. If there is one thing 
in religion of which the ordinary English Bible- 
reader is persuaded, it is this, that our Lord urges 
upon him the supreme duty of saving his "soul," 
even (if needs be) at the expense of his "life." If 
one tells him that "life" and "soul," as our Lord 
uses the word, are identical — that he must be willing 
and ready to lose his soul, his very and eternal self, 
in order to save it — he only wonders from what 
source such pestilent folly can proceed. Yet the 
more the saying is considered, the more hopelessly 
plain it is that all the centuries of teaching, all the 
millions of sermons founded upon this celebrated 
text in the Authorised Version, have been clean 
contrary to our Lord's meaning. Verse 26 has for 
its sole purpose to aggravate (so to speak) the awful 
cost of the sacrifice demanded in verse 25. That 
which a man calls his "life" or "soul" is his 
supreme possession, beside which all other possible 
belongings sink into insignificance ; yet it is precisely 
this which a man must be prepared to surrender, to 
suffer the total loss of, if he is (in the Divine sense) 
to gain it. When St. Paul says (and he evidently 
means it) that he could wish that he himself were 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 25 

anathema from Christ for the sake of his Jewish 
brethren, 1 we understand at once that he had entered 
into the full and true meaning of this word of the 
Kingdom which he so justly calls the word of the 
Cross. You must give up — not by way of a com- 
mercial bargain, as for value received, but joyfully 
and without reservation — all your own life, with all 
its desires and ambitions and aggrandizements ; and 
then the true eternal life will be yours. The " word 
of the Cross" means that for the man himself it is 
better to fail than to succeed, better to be despised 
than to be highly esteemed, better to be poor than 
to be rich, better to die than to live. All this (and 
more of the same kind) did "the Cross" imply for 
those who first heard of it, Jews or Greeks. And 
those who (very naturally) hated all this and spoke 
against it, and evaded it even when attracted by 
other aspects of Christianity, were "the enemies of 
the Cross of Christ," 2 as St. Paul would warn us 
even with tears, so sorry is he for their fatal error. 
It is absolutely clear from the context (Phil. iii. 
17-21) that their dislike to the Cross was not in 
the least theological, but altogether moral and 
ethical. It was not any dogma of the atonement 
that alienated them, but the demand that they 
should be content to lose their "life" of eating and 
drinking and enjoying themselves. 

The good seed is the word of the Kingdom, the 
word of the Cross. Wherever it is sown it will 
spring up with more or less of permanent result. 
It may seem a strange thing to say, but it is true, 

1 Rom. ix. 3. 2 Phil. iii. 18. 



26 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

that the astonishing success of the Salvation Army 
is due to precisely the same cause as that of so many 
Roman Catholic missions. The organization and 
the apparatus are no doubt cleverly arranged and 
adapted, but they are absolutely of the earth earthy, 
and are such as our Lord would have held very 
cheap. The Army succeeds because it has got the 
right sort of seed to sow — the word of the Cross 
for themselves and for their hearers, as well as for 
Christ. Just because they offer their officers nothing 
but poverty, toil, exposure, curses, blows, they get 
them in crowds. The posts most coveted are those 
in which there is most to suffer. Why not? 
Christianity addresses itself to what is noblest in 
human nature, to that latent chivalry and loyalty 
which grace can restore and exalt so wonderfully. 
Give men or women a chance to suffer and to die 
for some great cause, some great ideal, some great 
hero, and how wonderfully they respond ! When 
the cause is the saving of the world, when the ideal 
is the Kingdom of Heaven, when the hero is the 
incarnate Son of God, it would be amazing indeed 
if an unquenchable enthusiasm were not evoked. 
Our Lord threw Himself (humanly speaking) al- 
together upon the wonderful capacity for self- 
sacrificing devotion which is latent in human nature. 
He offered no attractions, as far as this world is 
concerned, but the opportunity of giving everything 
else up in order to please Him and to do good to 
others. Evidently He had entire confidence that 
this one attraction would draw to His side all who 
were worth drawing. The word of the Kingdom 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 27 

instinctively recommended itself to the "honest 
and good heart" just because it called for the 
most tremendous sacrifices, for the most complete 
renunciation. 1 

We all know that seed can be "sterilized" by 
being exposed to a certain temperature, or treated 
with certain acids. The seed is the word of God ; 
but if the word be preached as a kind of glorified 
counsel of prudence and self-interest, if we take out 
of it its original appeal to the enthusiasm, the 
chivalry, the power of self-sacrifice which is in men, 
the word is sterilized, and none need wonder that 
it is unfruitful. The genuine seed is only fitly sown 
by those who "for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake" 
leave behind them all they love, make no reserves 
and claim no immunities, renounce all the rewards 
and attractions of the world ; those, in fact, across 
whose lives are written plain the words, "having 
nothing, yet possessing all things." All manner 
of eloquence, and attractiveness, and cleverness are 
mere dust and rubbish as compared with this, 

1 If this seem exaggerated, let the reader refer to the difficult saying 
in St. Matthew xix. 12. Whatever may be the full significance of that 
passage, one is at least safe in saying that our Lord there speaks of 
the renunciation in some form of what is most prized — and innocently 
prized — among earthly satisfactions. This was already being done, 
He says, "for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake." Not for the sake 
of getting to Heaven — God forbid !— as though one could purchase 
eternal bliss by some temporal abnegations. No ; but " for the 
Kingdom of Heaven's sake," i.e., out of a pure, disinterested, devotion 
to the interests of Jesus Christ, of His Church and Gospel, of all that 
is rightly called by His name and connected with His service. It i3 
precisely when He speaks of these renunciations that our Lord seems 
to be least restrained, least careful to measure His words, or to guard 
Himself from being misunderstood. 



28 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

because this alone puts the sower in moral harmony 
with the seed, which is the word of the Cross. No 
doubt he can deliver the true message without 
himself responding to it. Did not Judas also preach 
the Kingdom of Heaven in his day? But it will 
not be good for him, nor in the long run effective 
for others. 

The parable of the good seed (as we ought to 
call it) is principally occupied with the fortunes of 
the seed after it is sown — fortunes so extraordinarily 
diverse as to call aloud for explanation. But clearly 
it was not our Saviour's purpose to explain anything, 
if by that we mean a bringing to light of the under- 
lying facts of human nature. One sees, of course, 
that some men are " trivial " (the word itself is 
derived from the beaten pathway) ; nothing seems 
to make much real impression upon them, and 
because it does not find any lodgment beneath the 
surface it is removed by any chance influence or 
passing interest. One sees that others are naturally 
shallow, and the deepest convictions they are capable 
of are quickly run through and done with. Others 
again are so engrossed with worldly cares and so 
forth, that their better nature is stifled. All these 
differences lie upon the surface of human character, 
and they explain, as far as they go, the extremely 
different reception which actually awaits the word 
of the Kingdom in different quarters ; but they 
themselves are merely noted, not in any way 
explained. We wish to ask of the Speaker a thou- 
sand questions. Whence do these differences of 
character or of temperament arise ? Are they final ? 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 29 

Can they not be dealt with? Must those which are 
unfavourable always be fatal ? Is there no process, 
e.g., by which a shallow character may be deepened ? 
Is not the Gospel intended for mankind at large? 
and does it not appeal to something which is in 
every man? Can it be true that it has, in fact, no 
chance of success except with such as are pre- 
disposed by nature to receive it? And if so, what 
must be held responsible for a cleavage in human 
nature so fundamental, so all-important? To all 
which the only answer is that the parable does 
not concern itself at all with any of these matters. 
It simply takes men as they are in character and 
temperament, and points out how the differences 
which actually exist affect the reception of the 
word. Equally hopeless it is, therefore, to enquire 
into the nature and origin of the " honest and good 
heart " 1 of which our Lord speaks. It is certain that 
no modern theologian would have ventured to speak 
of an honest and good heart as pre-existing in man 
before the coming of the word. He may, of course, 
try to explain it by pointing to the secret operation 
of the Spirit of God preparing certain men for faith 
and obedience. But there is absolutely no allusion to 
any such preparation in the parable. It is a fact that 
wherever the Gospel comes, among the heathen or 
the lapsed, a certain number of individuals do receive 
it with candour, with enthusiasm, with patience, 
because their goodness of character and disposition 
instinctively respond to it. It is a fact that one 
child, growing up unbaptized amidst heathenish 

1 Luke viii. 15. 



30 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

surroundings, remains pure and true, welcomes the 
word of the Cross with open arms, and remains 
faithful unto death ; while another child, most 
Christianly reared and tended, shows an unmis- 
takable aversion to that word from its earliest 
years, and persists to the end in that aversion. 
It is inexplicable, but it is true ; and the Saviour 
notes the fact quite simply, quite plainly, without 
any attempt to go behind it or throw any light 
upon it. The "honest and good heart" (the anima 
naturaliter Christiana of Tertullian) would be ex- 
plained by Augustine as the result of God's 
arbitrary decree, by Buddha as the reward of a 
previous life-history. Our Saviour does not explain 
it at all. Nor can we. It is an absolute, an in- 
scrutable, mystery. 

Two conclusions arise naturally, and (we may 
venture to say) certainly, out of our investigation 
of this first parable of the Kingdom — conclusions 
which apply with more or less force to the whole 
series. The first is that the teaching conveyed is 
extraordinarily original and unexpected. There 
are, of course, many allusions to sowing, and to 
that which comes of it, in the Old Testament ; 
but nothing there prepares us in the very least 
for this picture of results. The surprising variety 
of the results (even when there are any) is altogether 
peculiar, and could not possibly have been foreseen 
from an Old Testament point of view. Everything 
in the education of the disciples would dispose them 
to believe that the powers of the Kingdom would 
work uniformly and on a vast scale with little or no 



THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER 31 

reference to individual differences. All the eschat- 
ology of the prophets looks that way. But in our 
Lord's parable there is the widest possible variety in 
the effects actually produced. And that, although 
totally unexpected, has been always and everywhere 
the case. Even where the corporate, the imperial, the 
catholic, conception of the Kingdom has been most 
prominently asserted, the existence of this most 
tremendous, most momentous, variety of results has 
never been questioned. Only familiarity blinds us 
to the significance of this fact. 

The second, and even more widely important, con- 
sideration is this. Whilst the " parable " is the most 
picturesque and most telling of all methods of 
conveying truth, it is also the most strictly limited. 
It conveys in the most incisive manner a single 
lesson, and in every other respect it utterly refuses 
to be interrogated. Probably it commended itself to 
our Lord for this very reason. He evidently wished 
to communicate truth very partially, very gradually, 
very imperfectly — if imperfection be measured by 
the desire of man to know. Nothing, e.g., could be 
more absolutely contrasted than the finished system 
of the Schoolmen, in which every point and detail of 
religion is clearly defined and settled, and the teach- 
ing of our Lord as recorded in the Gospels. They 
do not only differ as the rough sketch may differ 
from the finished picture : they differ in their design, 
their whole conception of what the object of religious 
teaching is. Obviously our Lord's intention was as 
much negative as positive. Vast tracts of possible 
knowledge, which human curiosity would dearly love 



32 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

to explore, are left shrouded in impenetrable shadow. 
Partly by employing language so figurative as to 
defy literal acceptation, partly by using at all times 
the parable, which refuses to be interrogated beyond 
its obvious and very limited scope, He succeeded in 
concentrating the whole light of His revelation upon 
a comparatively few points which He considered of 
supreme importance. This consideration will need 
to be urged hereafter. As far as the parables of 
sowing are concerned, it is sufficiently recognized. 
Everybody knows that there are great moral 
problems connected with that wide diversity of 
results so picturesquely set forth. Everybody feels 
that they demand an explanation. Nobody looks to 
the parable for that explanation, because it is plain 
that beyond its own very limited scope the parable 
will not tell us, and was not meant to tell us, any- 
thing whatever. This is the more noteworthy because 
this parable is one of the few which our Lord Himself 
interpreted. We may say, with perfect reverence, 
that His interpretation adds nothing whatever to 
our understanding. Apparently, as far as we are 
concerned, its only object is to show us yet more 
plainly in what directions it is useless to pursue 
enquiries. We should have been able to interpret 
the good seed, the birds of the air, the thorns, the 
shallow soil, for ourselves ; and beyond these simple 
things the interpretation does not pretend to go — 
doubtless because the parable itself has no further 
scope than the one lesson involved in these. 



III. 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES OF THE 
FIELD 

St. Matthew xiii. 24-30 ; 37-43. 

Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of 
heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field : but 
while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, 
and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought 
forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the house- 
holder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy 
field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy 
hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we 
go and gather them up ? But he said, Nay ; lest while ye gather up 
the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow 
together until the harvest : and in the time of harvest I will say to the 
reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to 
burn them : but gather the wheat into my barn. 

He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is 
the Son of man ; the field is the world ; the good seed are the children 
of the kingdom ; but the tares are the children of the wicked one ; the 
enemy that sowed them is the devil ; the harvest is the end of the 
world ; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are 
gathered and burned in the fire ; so shall it be in the end of this world. 
The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of 
his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity ; and 
shall cast them into a furnace of fire : there shall be wailing and gnash- 
ing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the 
kingdom of their Father. 

«'HpHE parable of the tares of the field"— that 

-L is what the Disciples called it, 1 and the 

name has clung to it. But it would be more 

1 Matt. xiii. 36. 
D 33 



34 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

accurate to call it the parable of the good and bad 
seed, just as the first is properly called the parable of 
the good seed. If we habitually spoke of them by 
these names it would be easier for us to bear in mind 
the relationship between them, which is very close 
indeed. For the fact is that other people can sow, 
and do sow, as well as those who go forth bearing 
precious seed. That which they sow is something 
very different from the word of the Kingdom, but it 
has the same natural property of springing up ; and 
the results of the mingled growth, strange and 
baffling and melancholy as they are, are set forth 
in this parable. Now we might take for granted that 
the explanation would be unusually easy, because we 
have not only our Lord's interpretation to fall back 
upon, but also the analogy of the previous parable, 
with which it has so much in common. This, how- 
ever, is not the case. There is no parable of 
which the popular apprehension is more thoroughly 
blurred and useless. The outline is extremely 
familiar, but hardly any attempt is made to connect 
its teaching with the actual facts of religious 
history or experience. The reason of this is not 
far to seek. It is almost always assumed (assumed 
even more than asserted) that this parable runs 
on all fours with that of the drag net at the end 
of the chapter. It is held to set forth the mix- 
ture of good and bad people in the visible Church, 
and the hopelessness of any drastic attempt to 
separate them until the day of judgment. This 
reading of it is no doubt founded on a natural but 
mistaken misapprehension of our Lord's interpre- 
tation. 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES 35 

But what is important to note just now is this, 
that it has passed into general and almost un- 
questioned acceptance entirely through the influence 
of the great Augustine. Commentators repeat one 
another from age to age with wonderful persistence, 
and no doubt they do wisely as a rule. But when 
we find out that St. Augustine himself adopted this 
interpretation under stress of controversy — of a 
controversy in which he was hard pressed for 
Scriptural arguments — we are not inclined to accept 
even his authority without looking into the matter. 
Everybody knows how eagerly texts and passages 
are pressed into the service of one side or the 
other when some burning question is agitating 
men's minds. Afterwards it is perceived that these 
texts and passages had not in fact any direct bear- 
ing upon the subject. Now St. Augustine and his 
friends were at strife especially with men like the 
Donatists, who were separating themselves from the 
general mass of Christians in order to find a greater 
purity of religious life and a stricter discipline. The 
parable of the drag-net obviously suited their side 
of the controversy. "If thou art a good fish in 
the Gospel net," cries the great Bishop to the 
Donatist, "what folly to try to get out again be- 
cause there are bad fish in it too : possess thy soul 
in patience until the shore is reached : then shall 
they be cast away, but thou shalt be set apart for 
eternal life." Obviously, too, it was open to him 
to apply the parable of the tares in the same way. 
"If thou art good grain in the Master's field," he 
cries, " stay where thou art : do not mind the tares 



36 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

around thee: do not seek to root thyself up, and 
transplant thyself into some more select enclosure : 
that is not the Master's will : remain as thou art : 
grow where thou art: no good grain shall fail to 
be safely garnered when the great day of division 
comes." Now it may be fully allowed that St. 
Augustine was right — he had, at any rate, an 
immense deal to say for his position from Scrip- 
ture. But it may be quite consistently denied that 
he had any right to impose this interpretation upon 
the parable of the tares. It is a common and an 
easy thing to press all manner of Scriptures into 
the service of some religious argument which is 
sound enough in itself; but the practice leads to 
any amount of confusion, and it is not really 
consistent with true reverence for the Scriptures 
themselves. Putting aside, therefore, St. Augustine's 
authority, as discredited by circumstances in this 
particular case, we perceive at once that the analogy 
of the former parable is altogether against his inter- 
pretation. " The good seed is the word of the King- 
dom." That fundamental assumption ought surely 
to govern both parables of sowing. It ought surely 
to fix the meaning of the servants' question, " Didst 
thou not sow good seed in thy field ? " If the good 
seed means sound Christian teaching, then by every 
rule of analogy the bad seed stands for such corrupt 
and spurious teachings as we know both from Scrip- 
ture and from primitive Church history to have 
sprung up in extraordinary abundance wherever 
Christ was named. That presumption certainly 
holds the field until it is ruled out by some very 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES 37 

convincing argument. Such an argument is found 
by many in our Lord's own words : " The good 
seed, these are the sons of the kingdom ; and the 
tares are the sons of the evil one ; and the enemy 
that sowed them is the devil." No doubt they 
would say, this is a very "hard saying," for it 
actually and without any reservation ascribes the 
origin and existence of unworthy Christians to the 
devil. Still it may be illustrated (though not 
exactly paralleled) from St. John viii. 44, where our 
Lord tells the unbelieving Jews that they are of 
their father the devil ; from Acts xiii. 10, where 
St. Paul calls Elymas a son of the devil ; and from 
1 St. John iii. 10, where the Apostle seems to say 
that all those who do wickedness are children of 
the devil. Putting therefore this difficulty aside, we 
come back to the saying, " The good seed, these 
are the sons of the kingdom, and the tares are the 
sons of the evil one," and we compare it with what 
is said about the seed in the former parable. For 
brevity's sake we may content ourselves with the one 
last clause in the interpretation given by our Lord. 
Thus it runs : — St. Matthew xiii. 23, " He that was 
sown upon the good ground, this is he that heareth 
the word," etc. ; St. Mark iv. 20, " Those are they that 
were sown upon the good ground, such as hear the 
word," etc.; St. Luke viii. 15, "That in the good 
ground, these are such as in an honest and good 
heart, having heard the word," etc. In all this 
variety one thing is perfectly clear. There is a de- 
liberate confusion of language between the seed and 
the people in whose hearts the seed is sown. The 



38 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

language which has been reported with so much 
verbal difference and so much substantial agreement 
by the Evangelists is as awkward in the Greek as 
it is in English. If it were anywhere else we should 
certainly say it was confusion of thought due to 
careless and inaccurate mental processes. The seed 
is one thing ; it is confessedly the word of the 
Kingdom. The people who get sown with the seed, 
who profit or do not profit by it, are another thing ; 
they are confessedly the hearers of the word. But 
of course there is no confusion of thought, and the 
confusion of language so curiously palpable in the 
record is intentional. Of set purpose our Lord 
identified the seed and the products of the seed, 
as embodied in the after life of the men who re- 
ceived it. Of set purpose, because a great truth 
lies in that identification. It is profoundly true that 
the word of the Kingdom grows into the man, so 
that what he becomes is due not to himself, but 
to it. The man himself becomes the product, the 
embodiment, the realization, the fulfilment of the 
Heavenly word. That is a truth which is readily 
recognized as a very important one, and our Lord 
sets it forth by this apparent confusion of ideas. 
Here, as so often, He is willing to sacrifice effect — 
that effect which is due to simple consistency of 
imagery — to the need for setting forth the truth. It 
is not possible to tell the story of the sower and 
the seed very effectively, precisely because of this 
confusion in our Lord's explanation. Those who 
tell the story to children instinctively alter it so as 
to avoid this awkward feature. That is a loss — a 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES 39 

loss which He deliberately incurred for a higher 
gain. The religious life, He means to say, is not 
merely human life touched and vivified by heavenly 
influences. It is itself a thing come down from 
Heaven ; it is in fact the Life of Christ Himself 
implanted in us, and in us asserting and displaying 
its own divine characteristics. The "implanted 
word" of St. James 1 (where he seems to be think- 
ing of these parables of sowing) is identical with 
the " Christ in us " 2 of St. Paul, Who does in a sense 
supersede and supplant our own life. 

Now, if we turn to the difficult saying about the 
sons of the Kingdom and the sons of the evil one, 
we see at once that our Lord spoke in perfect 
keeping with the line which He had deliberately 
adopted. He could not say anything else, since He 
had already identified the seed sown with its living 
products in human shape. The good seed is beyond 
all question the word of the Cross ; but it grows 
into good Christians, and therefore it is " the sons 
of the Kingdom." Similarly the evil seed, the tares, 
is certainly false teaching; but it grows naturally 
and necessarily into evil and degraded people, and 
therefore "the tares are the sons of the evil one." 
It will be seen that the expression which causes 
so much difficulty — the tares are the children of the 
evil one, and the enemy that sowed them is the 
devil — is not really difficult at all if we recognize 
the fact that it is an extremely compressed statement 
which sets forth with startling brevity the result of 
a long process. In their beginning the tares are 

1 James i. 21. 2 Gal. ii. 20. 



40 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

false teachings, specially designed to counteract the 
good effects of the word of God. In their end, 
by virtue of that identification to which attention 
has been called above, they are bad people — people 
such as St. John speaks of as children of the devil. 1 
Neither the sons of the Kingdom nor the sons of 
the evil one are planted ready-made in the field. 
To entertain any such notion is to throw into utter 
confusion, not Christian theology only, but also 
all the imagery, and (so to speak) machinery of 
these parables of sowing. What is sown is merely 
seed ; but the seed grows up and bears fruit after 
its kind ; and since this fruit is human conduct and 
character, the seed becomes identified with the men 
into whose lives it has grown. 

This reading of the parable is really forced upon 
us by the analogy of its companion picture ; it is also 
indicated by our Lord Himself. " The Son of man," 
He says, " shall send forth His angels, and they 
shall gather out of His Kingdom all things that 
cause stumbling, and them that do iniquity." What 
has to be removed is twofold, first things, then 
pei'sons, corresponding exactly to the tares in their 
early and in their developed state ; beginning as 
pernicious teachings, ending as evildoers. It is, 
of course, in perfect keeping with our Lord's 
methods of speech that both things and persons 
are cast into the furnace of fire. The "beast" 
and the " false prophet " (who represent, presumably, 
not individuals but systems of violence and error) 
are to be "cast alive into the lake of fire burning 
with brimstone." 2 

1 i John iii. 10. 2 Rev. xix 20. 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES 4* 

Again, this reading of the parable gives a wonder- 
fully vivid portraiture of the Kingdom from a point 
of view which is beyond question important and 
true. Nothing is more certain, although it could 
hardly have been anticipated, than that the good 
seed never has the field to itself, and did not from the 
first. There are rival teachings, industriously spread, 
eagerly accepted by many, fit to deceive the very 
elect, which have their proper outcome in a luxuriant 
crop of corrupt and unsanctified lives. Whatever 
objection may be taken to this position (and this 
objection will not be ignored) it is certain that it 
is in perfect concord with the later books of the 
New Testament, and with early Christian opinion. 
St. Paul lets us know that his steps were dogged 
all over the world by Judaizers, who were evidently 
stirred up to a sort of frenzy of proselytizing zeal 
by their hatred of the free grace which he preached. 
What he felt about them and their converts may 
be gathered from such a passage as this, " Beware 
of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of 
the concision" 1 — a term of angry contempt, this 
last, for those who called themselves " the circum- 
cision." Or from his passionate exclamation : " I 
would that they which unsettle you would even cut 
themselves off" 2 (perhaps "mutilate themselves"). St. 
Paul would have heartily agreed that both the authors 
and the victims of these Judaizing teachings were 
sons of the evil one. So would St. John of those 
who embraced the errors against which he testifies 
in his epistles. " If any man cometh unto you and 

1 Phil. iii. 2. 2 Gal. v. 12. 



42 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

bringeth not this [true] teaching, receive him not 
into your house and give him no greeting ; for he 
that giveth him greeting partaketh in his evil 
works." 1 It would appear that the false teachings 
which he denounces in his Epistles, were those 
"docetic" doctrines which afterwards became so 
popular, and gave rise to a considerable literature, 
nominally Christian. Their common ground was 
that Christ did not really suffer, because suffering and 
humiliation are unworthy of a Divine Being, and 
impossible. He did but cheat the wicked Jews by 
seeming to suffer until His hour of victory was come. 
His humanity, in fact, was illusory. It is difficult 
for us to understand how this kind of teaching could 
appeal to anyone, for it runs dead counter to the 
deepest convictions of all men now, whether believers 
or unbelievers. But we can readily see that in the 
days when it was popular it was tares, pure and 
simple. Such a teaching, so far as it grew into any- 
thing at all, could only grow into children of the 
evil one — into men and women of no earnestness, 
no love of truth, no sense of duty, no moral restraint, 
no spiritual enthusiasm. 

Still more emphatic is the same apostle's testimony 
in the Epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia. In 
the teaching of the Nicolaitans, and of " the woman 
Jezebel which calleth herself a prophetess," we have 
apparently in a rudimentary form the spurious 
Christianity which afterwards developed into Gnos- 
ticism, or, at any rate, into its coarser forms. It was 
their boast that to them it was given to know "the 

1 2 John io, ii. 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES 43 

deep things of Satan " x — a horrible parody upon "the 
deep things of God " of which St. Paul had spoken. 
To know all things, to gauge them by experiment, 
and so to master and appropriate them — irrespective 
of moral distinctions — was the great end proposed to 
themselves by these people ; it was their notion of 
the way of life. Their doctrine must have been pro- 
fessedly Christian, and had considerable following in 
Christian communities like Pergamum and Thyatira. 
No doubt it represented the extreme revolt from the 
strictness of Judaism, disguised itself in a show of 
spirituality, and sheltered itself under the name of 
St. Paul. No doubt this seed also had its successes 
and its failures, but it found plenty of fertile soil 
awaiting it. We should hardly be wrong in suppos- 
ing that in the second century there were as many 
Gnostics as Christians. If they failed to continue, 
the failure was not due to any lack of numbers or of 
popularity, but to the absence of moral earnestness, 
which was an integral part of their system. They 
did not die for the Christian faith they were supposed 
to hold. Why should they? Why should they not 
deny Christ, and offer sacrifice to idols, if necessity 
arose ? They knew better, of course, and knowing is 
everything. What a man did with his hands, or any 
other part of him, could not affect the mind, which is 
immaterial and free. The perfect Gnostic regarded 
all actions as indifferent in themselves, and therefore 
took the line which at the moment was easiest and 
pleasantest. But this very adaptability, this lack of 
what all men count as " principle," was their destruc- 

1 Rev. ii. 24. 



44 The kingdom of heaven 

tion. Those who cannot die cannot live either — in 
the long run. The Christians lived on, though 
constantly thinned out by persecution, because the 
tremendous earnestness of their convictions made 
their mutual coherence perfect, and filled them with 
missionary ardour. The Gnostics came to an end 
because they had no very strong reason for being 
Gnostics — or anything else — if it turned out to be 
inconvenient. So the Lord of the harvest sent forth 
His angels (in disguise), and they gathered out of 
His kingdom these stumbling-blocks of Gnosticism 
and these pseudo - Christians who had no moral 
earnestness. 

In this connection we may look that objection in 
the face to which we referred above. We all feel 
secretly uneasy at the extreme vehemence with which 
false teachers are denounced in the New Testament. 
We think of the many forms of professedly Christian 
teaching now which we consider (may be) extremely 
erroneous and pernicious, and we wonder whether 
our Lord would have said that He " hated " them ; 
whether St. John would have had us refuse to their 
teachers the ordinary civilities of social life ; whether 
he himself would have rushed out of a public bath 
when one of them entered. If we allow ourselves to 
think of acting like this towards any religious leader 
of the present day, we perceive at once that it would 
not only be unmannerly, it would be bigoted and 
unchristian. And yet it is not easy to say clearly 
where the difference comes in. We might say that 
such action would be incongruous and open to 
reproach now, because the strength and heat of 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES 45 

Christian conviction has confessedly cooled down ; 
the faith is not everything to us as it was to them. 
But then no increase of conviction or of earnestness 
would make such action any more possible to us. 
Dismissing all reasons founded upon indifference, or 
upon a toleration which is not Christian, is it not true 
that we have learnt from experience to draw a deep 
and wide distinction between faith and morals, creed 
and character? The man who differs from us toto 
ccelo in religion may be as good as we — perhaps 
better. " There 's good and bad in all religions," is 
the popular verdict, and it is largely justified by the 
facts, as far as we may know them. We must 
acknowledge that frankly, and it absolutely prohibits 
any hatred or lack of kindness towards those that 
preach "another gospel," however much we may 
dislike it. But we must as frankly acknowledge 
that the point of view in the New Testament is 
quite different. The heresies denounced there are 
always immoral. They have a likeness to Christianity 
on the doctrinal side, but no sympathy with the stern- 
ness of its moral teaching. The Cross has always 
been taken out in order to please men, in order to get 
rid of the hard necessity for crucifying sin and self. 
The very strong things said of false teachers by the 
sacred writers can only be applied to such as destroy 
the moral power of Christianity and make the word 
of the Cross of none effect. The tares which are 
destined to be burnt are not merely theologically 
wrong : they are morally corrupt. 

It may of course be asked why our Lord should 
so pointedly have ignored the distinction between 



46 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

religious faith and moral conduct which has since 
become so clear ; why He should have assumed 
that they were practically identical, and allowed 
His immediate followers to assume it too. No 
sufficient answer is forthcoming yet, but it may go 
some way if we point out that our Lord often 
speaks in a way which is extraordinarily abbreviated 
and compressed. He speaks of things absolutely, 
as though here and now, which are yet only foreseen 
in their essential tendencies, in their certain (though 
remote) results. From His point of view, it may 
be, falsity in faith and failure in character are 
identical, because in the ultimate truth and out- 
come of things they must be. Amidst the infinite 
confusions and cross-purposes of the world (especially 
in its present complexity) faith and morals seem 
to have little connection. In the end — or rather 
we should say at bottom — they are the same. All 
conduct is governed by motives ; the only sufficient 
motives are furnished "by the faith of the Son of 
God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." 1 
To tamper with that faith is to impair those motives ; 
to impair those motives is to wreck the character 
which is determined by them. It is possible to 
acknowledge the truth of this without ignoring any 
of the facts of modern life. 

Probably it is in the Mission Field that we should 
expect to find the best illustrations of this parable 
as of the preceding. We may take the case, e.g., 
of the Maoris of New Zealand, a singularly in- 
telligent race of savages who were converted to 

1 Gal. ii. 20. 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES 47 

Christianity with unusual ease and completeness. 
Nevertheless, the greater part of them relapsed 
into a horrid fanaticism made up out of discordant 
elements of Old Testament and New Testament 
teaching, mingled with sheer delusion and imposture, 
and totally without moral power. Or we may take 
an individual example, very instructive in its way, 
from the brief history of Zulu Christianity. This 
man was the most promising pupil of one of 
the mission establishments in Natal. Very well 
educated, very industrious, and very capable, he 
has reached a position which few, if any, of his 
countrymen can boast of. He remains also a 
religious man, to all appearance. But he is a poly- 
gamist He took a second wife on the plea that his 
first had no children. He took a third for no reason 
at all except that she was young and good-looking. 
These things he did, not like many who relapse 
into heathenism, but as a religious man, basing his 
conduct upon the examples of Abraham, David, 
and other Old Testament saints. It is not necessary 
to judge him too harshly. Part of the blame rests 
upon those Christian teachers who put the Bible 
into the hands of savages as the word of God, and 
do not explain to them that the ethics of the Old 
Testament are rudimentary, imperfect, and therefore 
obsolete, because accommodated to the hardness of 
men's hearts and the needs of an age which has 
long ago been left behind in the moral education 
of mankind. But when we consider that polygamy 
is the greatest of all hindrances to the spread of 
the Gospel in those regions, and when we perceive 



48 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

how great is the influence of this man's example 
for evil, then we must acknowledge that here is a 
definite and veritable example of the tares which 
are so industriously sown upon the top of the good 
seed. Because this man's actual life, before the eyes 
of his people, is the product of the false doctrine he 
has imbibed, he is (in our Lord's language) a son 
of the evil one, and the enemy that sowed him is 
the devil. Lest we should esteem ourselves as being 
beyond the reach of such sowing, we may recall 
the fact that Mormonism drew countless "converts" 
from the Protestant populations of north-west 
Europe. If Mormonism is dead, or dying, to-day, 
that is not because religious influences have been 
too much for it, but solely because political circum- 
stances led to its being suppressed (practically) by 
force of arms. Indeed it is not possible to shut 
one's eyes to the fact that a tendency to Anti- 
nomianism — to a throwing over of the moral law — 
constantly besets spiritual Christianity. The belated 
legalism which practically confounds the two dispen- 
sations, which regards Calvary itself as a new and 
superior Sinai, which (in the teeth of St. Paul's 
Epistles) persists in treating Christianity as a mass 
of rules and observances, is such a hateful thing 
that it provokes men to rush into the opposite and 
even worse error. The eternal preaching against 
"good works" which was fashionable fifty years 
ago is past and gone, thank God. It was tares. 
So far as it had any effect, it killed out Christian 
earnestness and stifled the voice of the Spirit in 
innumerable hearts. " Follow Me," said Christ, " and 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES 49 

thou shalt have treasure in heaven." " Do not follow 
Him," cried the fashionable preacher in effect ; " if 
you do, you will be doing good works, and then 
you will not be saved by grace." There is a very 
real danger about Christian activity. But to kill 
the activity in order to avoid the danger is a travesty 
of St. Paul's teaching, and is so remote from our 
Lord's teaching as not even to be a travesty of it. 
There is then a constant tendency in Christian 
teaching, under the influence of human impatience 
and exaggeration, to deteriorate into something 
which has no moral power. We cannot forget, 
when we take note of this fact, that the peasants 
of Palestine seem to have been convinced that the 
wheat itself degenerated into tares. Apparently that 
is impossible. What looks like degeneration is 
really (in either case) the insidious and inexplicable 
substitution of something quite different. The moral 
failures of Christianity are not due in any case to 
any inferiority or unsuitability in the good seed, 
the word of the Kingdom. The field hath tares, 
because an enemy hath sown them. 

It is now open to us to indicate exactly where 
the "moral" of the parable comes in. The tares 
were not to be pulled up lest the growing wheat, 
whose roots were intertwined with those of the 
tares, should be rooted up too. False doctrines are 
not to be violently suppressed. The wish to do so 
is sure to arise, because the damage which they 
cause is very serious and very lamentable. The 
kind of toleration which regards them with indiffer- 
ence has no place whatever in the New Testament. 
36 



50 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

If there be any methods of discouraging the tares 
without violence, let them be used by all means ; 
but pulling them up is mischievous and forbidden. 
It is bound to do more harm than good. No saying 
of our Lord's has been more clearly illustrated in 
the history of the Church than this. The doctrines, 
for instance, of the Priscillianists were tares without 
doubt, like all the Manichaean teachings which in 
so many forms, and with such a strange persistency, 
invaded the Christian ground. But when, in the 
year 385, Bishop Priscillian and six of his followers 
were put to death by a Christian ruler at the 
instigation of Christian prelates, not only was a 
dreadful wrong done to these unhappy people, but a 
frightful injury was inflicted upon the more unhappy 
Church of Christ. No doubt the tares were some- 
what thinned by this violence, but the harm done 
to the true grain was incalculable. Much of the best 
teaching of Christianity withered away when perse- 
cution of Christians by Christians was begun. Still 
more noteworthy is the case of the Albigenses in 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their teachings 
also were tares, pure and simple. The assertion that 
they were a sect of an evangelical or Protestant 
character is absolutely false. They too were Mani- 
chaean, believed in two Gods, held matrimony to be 
sinful, and encouraged suicide. Whatever earnestness 
of conviction or severity of life there may have been 
among them, it is clear that the whole drift and 
tendency of their doctrines was immoral. Simon 
de Montfort and other leaders of the crusade against 
them may be credited with a sincere detestation of 



THE PARABLE OF THE TARES 51 

the mischievous propaganda which they carried on 
among the ignorant populations of Southern France. 
But the methods and results of the crusade were 
equally horrible. In the most literal way the wheat 
was rooted up with the tares. Albigenses and 
Catholics were slain without distinction, and it was 
left to God to " know His own." If from individuals 
we turn to doctrines, we see at once that along with 
the errors of the Manichaeans (bad enough no doubt) 
there perished out of the land all the finer feelings, 
all the gentler and kindlier counsels, which belong to 
the religion of Christ. The damage to the wheat was 
simply incalculable. It is not possible to use any 
violence, even of language, towards false doctrines in 
the field of Christ without doing some harm to the 
choice and tender growths of which He Himself is 
the patron. And the spoiling of these is a terrible 
price to have to pay for the partial destruction of the 
very worst tares. 



IV. 



THE PARABLE OF THE MUSTARD 
SEED 



St. Matt. xiii. 31-32. 

Another parable put 
he forth unto them, 
saying, The kingdom 
of heaven is like to a 
grain of mustard seed, 
which a man took, 
and sowed in his field: 

Which indeed is the 
least of all seeds : but 
when it is grown, it 
is the greatest among 
herbs, and becometh 
a tree, so that the 
birds of the air come 
and lodge in the 
branches thereof. 



St. Luke xiii. 18, 19. 

Then said he, Unto 
what is the kingdom 
of God like? and 
whereunto shall I re- 
semble it ? 

It is like a grain of 
mustard seed, which 
a man took, and cast 
into his garden ; and 
it grew, and waxed a 
great tree ; and the 
fowls of the air lodged 
in the branches of it. 



St, Mark iv. 30-32. 

And he said, Where- 
unto shall we liken 
the kingdom of God? 
or with what compa- 
rison shall we com- 
pare it? 

It is like a grain of 
mustard seed, which, 
when it is sown in the 
earth, is less than all 
the seeds that be in 
the earth : 

But when it is sown, 
it groweth up, and 
becometh greater than 
all herbs, andshooteth 
out great branches ; so 
that the fowls of the 
air may lodge under 
the shadow of it. 



WE may safely assume that this parable and 
that of the leaven are closely connected, 
without being at all identical in meaning. That 
seems to follow from the way in which they lie 
together in the Gospels, especially in that of St. Luke, 
where they appear isolated from the others, and in 

52 



THE MUSTARD SEED 53 

an entirely different connection. They are obviously 
alike in this, that they both mean extension, growth, 
development — and that, rapid and surprising. But 
they differ as obviously in this, that in the one case 
the extension takes an outward and visible form, 
and is embodied in a concrete shape ; whereas in 
the other case the extension is that of a powerful 
agent working invisibly to the human eye, but 
producing a very great effect upon the whole mass 
with which it has to do. It is the same activity that 
is really at work in both cases — the activity of what 
we call vegetable life — but the two forms in which 
it manifests itself so surprisingly are somewhat 
sharply contrasted : they are complemental the one 
to the other. 

Now if we bring to the elucidation of these 
parables the same historical tests which we have 
already found so useful, they will stand out before 
our eyes with the utmost distinctness both in their 
likeness and their unlikeness. After the initial 
stage in which the word of the Kingdom is first 
disseminated, and after the ensuing period of false 
teaching and of moral perversion, the next clearly 
marked stage is that of rapid growth. Nothing is 
more astonishing than the quickness with which 
the Christian faith spread, and the Christian Society 
ramified, throughout the Roman Empire during the 
centuries of persecution, after the first great crop of 
Gnostic and kindred heresies had begun to die down. 
The persecution itself did not stimulate the growth 
of Christianity : that is a blunder founded on certain 
rhetorical expressions of the early Christian writers. 



54 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

The indirect evidence is overwhelming that, whilst 
the quality of the Christian converts was improved, 
their quantity was largely diminished by the terror of 
the State. But the persecution was itself to a great 
degree dependent upon the rapid spread of the new 
religion. The rulers of this world were frightened 
by the wholesale proselytism that they saw going on. 
With that cUrious mixture of timidity and obstinacy 
which so often afflicts the mere politician, they appre- 
hended all manner of dreadful consequences from 
the growth of the Church, and persisted in thinking 
that they could stop it. Anyhow, that growth is the 
great fact of these centuries. The words of Tertullian 
addressed to the Emperor about the year 200 A.D. 
are no doubt rhetorical (like all his words), but still 
substantially true. " We are a people of yesterday, 
and yet we have filled every place belonging to you 
— cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very 
camp, your tribes and companies, your palace, senate, 
forum. We leave you your temples only. We can 
count your armies ; our numbers in a single province 
will be greater." Never was boast more unwisely 
made, but never was it more justified by the facts. 
It was the mysterious power of growth in the in- 
significant mustard-seed, which no man may explain. 
It was the equally mysterious capacity of the unseen 
leaven to impart its own state to the kindred matter 
surrounding it. This power, this capacity, was and is 
inherent in the new religion itself. That the sudden 
growth of those centuries was greatly favoured 
by circumstances need not be doubted. Neither 
should it be denied that under certain other circum- 



THE MUSTARD SEED 5$ 

stances the extension of the Kingdom has been 
greatly checked and even brought to a standstill. 
All the same, it has asserted itself so often and so 
remarkably that we are obliged to recognize it, on 
the ground of history and experience alone, as an 
inherent property of Christianity. It does not belong 
to us to prophesy, but we may take note of the signs 
of the times, and these signs all point to another 
approaching epoch of rapid expansion in India, in 
China, in Africa. As long as the word of the 
Kingdom is really the word of the Cross, it does not 
seem to be sterilized (much as it is hindered) either 
by divisions or by corruptions. The minority of 
men, who have "honest and good" hearts, still 
receive it with joy; and the majority, who do not 
really appreciate it, will nevertheless acquiesce in it 
after a season. History, therefore, and experience 
bear witness in the very clearest manner to this 
particular aspect of the Kingdom, so picturesquely 
put before us in this pair of parables. 

These two methods of extension, however, are not 
only to be treated as two forms of the same activity : 
they fall to be considered in their contrast. The one 
is the growth of the Christian Society, the other is 
the spread of Christian ideas — of the Christian spirit, 
as it is sometimes expressed. These are so far from 
being identical, or even coincident, that where there 
is most extension one way there may be least the 
other way. And again very few people are equally 
capable of appreciating both. It may even be said 
of most that they " hold to the one and despise the 
other" — a phenomenon to which we shall have 



$6 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

to return. The mustard - seed comes first — not 
necessarily because it represents a more fundamental 
or necessary aspect of things. It was in our Lord's 
time a recognized symbol of something almost too 
tiny to be seen, or at least to be worth taking into 
account. "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard- 
seed" He said, indicating the least imaginable 
quantity, so as the quality was good. But the 
mustard-seed, tiny as it is, grows up into a tree. 
Not, of course, a forest tree, like an oak or an elm, 
but something which may fairly be called a tree in 
comparison with the plants and bushes and shrubs of 
the garden in which it was sown. Perhaps the birds 
are the best judges of what is, and what is not, a 
tree ; and they decide the question in favour of the 
mustard by finding its branches stout enough and 
leafy enough to roost in. Now this thing which 
towers above its neighbours in the garden, and rises 
to the dignity and uses of a tree, is just the tiny 
seed developed and grown to its full size and shape 
according to the law of life which was in the seed. 
There is an absolute continuity of life — vegetable life 
— between mustard seed and mustard tree. It has 
not increased by mere mechanical or arithmetical 
addition. It has absorbed all this, by which it has 
grown, into itself from air or soil, has incorporated it 
all with itself, retaining all the time its own oneness 
and identity. In a word the mustard tree is a body : 
not, of course, an animal body like ours, but still a 
body with an organized life of its own. However 
inferior the vegetable world may be accounted, the 
tree still presents the one essential feature of a 



THE MUSTARD SEED 57 

structural variety in unity, the whole frame being 
permeated by the mysterious principle which we call 
life. Downwards to the furthest fibres of its roots, 
and upwards to the highest twigs of its branches, the 
tree through all its various and ever-varying parts is 
one, and is (in a true though limited sense) alive. 
There we have the essential truth of a " body," and 
there we come into touch with all that teaching of 
St. Paul about the Church as a " body " with which 
we are so familiar. 

Just now, however, we must go back to the parable 
of the mustard tree in order to observe that in it 
our Lord distinctly regarded the Kingdom of 
Heaven as a visible and corporate institution, as 
a religious body among others which it was to 
overtop and overshadow, in a word as the Christian 
Church. That is only one aspect of the Kingdom, 
one amongst many, one which is immediately 
supplemented by a cognate but different aspect : 
but still it is one aspect of the Kingdom. There 
would not be any sense in the parable if there were 
not to be a visible Society whose rapid and unex- 
pected growth should make it conspicuous in the 
eyes of all men. Christian history emphatically 
assures us that there was such a Society. Ask 
every heathen emperor of the first three centuries ; 
ask every heathen writer who deigns to mention the 
Christians : what they saw with fear and aversion, 
what they waged war with to the death, was not 
an opinion, or a cult, or a set of principles, but a 
Society which held all together, which had its officers 
and its passwords, which threatened the security of 



58 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

the State, just because it was coherent and corporate, 
which seemed to them (who knew not the distinction 
between civil and religious) an imperium in imperio. 
When we speak of the Christian Church as "rami- 
fying" throughout the Empire, we use the word 
quite accurately. To "ramify" is to throw out 
branches, like the trees above us ; or still more 
like certain lowly plants which drive their multi- 
tudinous stems under or along the surface of the 
ground, and send up continual shoots in every place. 
Such was the spread of the Church. Everywhere 
she had her branches, her members, her congre- 
gations ; and everywhere they were one, not 
disconnected, not isolated, not separate. It was 
precisely because they divined this fact that the 
rulers fell into that kind of panic which more than 
anything else leads to blind fury and cruelty. It 
was not an epidemic of Christian opinion with which 
they had to deal, but the endless ramifications of a 
corporate Society which would presently supersede 
the State. No doubt they misunderstood the nature 
and object of the unity. We know that it was 
essentially a unity of the Spirit ; but we are bound to 
acknowledge that it was expressed and fortified by a 
corresponding unity of outward religious life. The 
"one Lord, one faith, one baptism " was represented 
and reinforced by the Christians being " all partakers 
of that one bread." Without venturing on disputed 
ground, we may add that a loose but effectual organi- 
zation served the purposes of inter-communication, of 
mutual support and edification, of necessary discipline. 
Whatever else, then, Christianity was to them that 



THE MUSTARD SEED 59 

were without, it was in the first place a Society 
which grew at a surprising rate, and yet remained 
unmistakably one. Whatever else it was to them 
that were within, it was unquestionably a Society^ 
a Society for holy living and mutual help, a Society 
which Christ Himself had taught them to call His 
Church, a Society of which St. Paul had written 
things so high and glorious as to pass man's under- 
standing. A heathen and a Christian in the fifth 
century (let us say) after Christ would have found 
this parable equally clear and equally remarkable. 
"As for the other parables," the heathen would 
have said, " I know not what they mean, but this 
one is plain enough. Your mustard tree has indeed 
grown prodigiously, as your Master said. If one 
had not known, one would not have believed that 
it had continuously expanded from the tiny seed 
sown in Judaea, and yet remained identical with 
it. It has filled the world with its branches, and 
yet it is essentially one." 

Now if these things cannot be gainsaid, if the 
Kingdom of Heaven was originally revealed (in 
one aspect of it) as a corporate body endowed with 
a marvellous capacity of growth, if St. Paul urged 
and illustrated and enforced this corporate aspect of 
the Kingdom with the greatest earnestness, then it is 
certain that no loyal Christian can fail to hold a doc- 
trine of " the Church " and to regard it as a doctrine 
immensely important. What is so profoundly to 
be regretted is not so much that Christians have 
no fixed and common doctrine of the Church, as 
that a multitude of them have no doctrine at all. 



6o THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

They will not hear of it. The very sound affronts 
them because they vaguely connect it with some 
ecclesiastical despotism, or some unfounded preten- 
sions to authority. They will hear of Christianity 
as a set of opinions, as a rule of good living, as a 
divine influence, but the corporate aspect of the 
Church does not appeal to them at all ; it only 
angers them. There must be something very wrong 
in this, because this very aspect is distinctly inti- 
mated by our Lord, emphatically dwelt upon by 
St. Paul, and most prominently presented in history. 
Loyalty and honesty alike demand that we should 
face the question of " the Church." It is not enough 
to admit that Christianity spread through the world 
like leaven. It also grew like a tree — like a seed 
(our Lord says) which grew into a tree, very unex- 
pectedly big, but still a tree, not a grove of trees, not 
even a group of trees. The Christianity which 
overcame the world by suffering and persisting, was 
emphatically the Christianity of one Church, which 
had, no doubt, its internal troubles, but never 
permitted anyone to doubt its organic unity. It is 
impossible in this connection not to refer to the 
teaching of St. Paul, according to which this Church 
(the mustard tree of the parable) is at once the Body 
and the Bride of Christ — nay, in a sense His alter ego 
— which can hardly be discriminated from Himself. 
"As the body is one" (he says) "and hath many mem- 
bers, and all the members of the body, being many, are 
one body ; so also is Christ " 1 — by which, of course, 
he means the Church of Christ. It is the simple old 

1 I Cor. xii. 12. 



THE MUSTARD SEED 61 

lesson of organic unity combined with an endless 
variety of function which was urged by Menenius 
Agrippa long before St. Paul's time upon the warring 
members of the Roman commonwealth. Christians, 
like members of any other body corporate, have 
duties towards one another and have need one of 
another. "So also is the Church," St. Paul meant. 
But he did not write that. Something came into his 
mind which made him substitute at the last moment 
another name, and he actually wrote "so also is 
Christ" Now that is an extraordinary change. 
In another man it could only be put down to an 
unaccountable confusion of thought — or possibly to 
one of those brilliant intuitions by which a magnifi- 
cent truth is compressed into a single unexpected 
word. In St. Paul it is something more than a 
brilliant intuition. The Church and Christ are so 
far one that in a passage like this — which is not 
rhetorical but didactic, and concerned with practical 
duties— the name of Christ may be substituted for 
the name of the Church. In other words, " Christ " 
may be written where " the Church " is unquestionably 
meant. For no one doubts that it is the Church in 
a corporate capacity which resembles the human 
body with all its members, organs, and functions, 
bound together in a living unity. What is the 
justification for this? What is the justification for 
that bracketing together (if I may so express it) of 
Christ and the Church in Eph. iii. 2i(R.V.),"Unto Him 
be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto 
all generations for ever and ever " ? Only one thing 
could justify such language, and that is St. Paul's 



62 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

doctrine of the mystical oneness of Christ and His 
Church, by virtue of which she is His body, His 
bride, His other self, the recipient and reflexion of 
the sum total of His glories and His attributes. 
If this sounds exaggerated, let us call before us that 
word " fulness " (7r\ripco/uLa) which the Apostle uses so 
pointedly in his letters to the sister churches of 
Ephesus and Colossse. " It was the good pleasure 
of the Father," he writes, "that in Him [Christ] 
should all the fulness dwell." 1 Accordingly, "in 
Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily." 2 "The fulness," used of a person, certainly 
means the sum total of attributes and glories. These 
dwelt in Christ " bodily," i.e., according to the nature 
of the Incarnation, whereby He was "found in 
fashion as a man." But this is not all. This same 
" fulness," which is Christ's, is realized in the Church. 3 
She is His fulness. There is not anything divine 
and heavenly in our Lord which is not found in the 
Church. Nor is this all. In Eph. v. we have a 
well-known passage which is rhetorical certainly, 
but none the less true in its way. Christ and His 
Church are compared to the ideal married pair, 
the husband and wife of Gen. ii., and the relation 
between them is declared to be the same. "This 
mystery is great," he says, " but I speak in regard of 
Christ and of the Church." The " mystery " to which 
he refers is the fact that by the will of God husband 
and wife become one flesh, so that as our Lord says 
" They are no more twain, but one flesh." 4 

1 Col. i. 19. 2 Col. ii. 9. 

3 Eph. i. 23. 4 Matt. xix. 6. 



THE MUSTARD SEED 63 

Now no reverent person will dismiss these things 
as figures of speech, or flights of rhetoric ; nor will 
he be content to accept them in a merely negative 
way without trying to take them into his actual 
faith. No one who wants to be in harmony with 
the teaching of the New Testament can possibly 
be satisfied with mere " individualism " or mere 
" Congregationalism " in religion. The inclination to 
do this is extremely widespread, because the tempta- 
tion to do so is very strong. Amidst our present 
divisions it is infinitely more convenient to be 
content with personal religion and to have no 
doctrine of "the Church," to ignore the Church, to 
treat all " Church " matters as though they belonged 
exclusively to the realm of personal preference, or 
of local convenience, or of chance. Almost all 
Christians who glory in " undenominational " religion, 
and many others beside, have practically no doctrine 
of the Church. They have much to say about 
" Churches," as if polygamy were the original law 
of Heaven ; but if they ever speak of " the Church," 
they only mean the arithmetical aggregate of such 
Christians as have (in their opinion) obtained like 
precious faith with themselves. Such a low and 
poor conception could never have inspired the 
glowing language of the Apostle. If the Church 
is only the numerical sum-total of all those who 
are Christians, then a considerable part of the New 
Testament is exaggerated and misleading. The 
Church which is the Bride, the Lamb's wife, is not 
a multitude of individuals, nor is it an aggregation 
or a federation of religious bodies. No one could 



64 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

ever believe that, unless he felt himself shut up to 
it by the cruel exigency of a poor and stunted 
creed, and therefore forced himself to accept it. 
No doubt " the Church " is in one sense made up 
of congregations (which are also called " Churches "), 
just as these are made up of individuals ; but it is 
a great deal more. In that vision of things eternal 
which was given to St. Paul, the Church appears 
as the counterpart of Christ Himself, existing from 
the beginning, created for Him (as Eve was for 
Adam) to be His spouse, His other self, the recipient 
and reflexion of His perfections. That is of course 
an ideal, and ideals are notoriously hard to deal 
with and easy to deride. To this day it is evident 
that the ideal has not been realized within our ken, 
except in the most imperfect and fragmentary way. 
But it is not maris ideal ; it is God's ideal, with 
which He started (if it is permitted to say so), fore- 
knowing the end from the beginning, foreseeing the 
perfect and the final in the partial and temporary, 
and loving it as His own worthy of Himself. In 
a mystical sense, but in a sense not the less real 
and true, the Church existed before ever there was 
a single Christian in the world. The Bride was 
foreknown and foreordained and called and justified 
and glorified from all eternity in and with and for 
the Bridegroom. So then it is in the highest sense 
true that we individual Christians do not make the 
Church (that is only an earthly way of putting it) ; 
it is rather the Church that makes us, as one by 
one, in time and place, we are "added unto the 
Church," and are made to share her eternal glories 



THE MUSTARD SEED 65 

which are Christ's. If we should agree that some 
such teaching is demanded of us, if we would give 
any serious heed to the things which are said about 
the Church in the New Testament — if this be the 
true vision of the Bride, the Lamb's wife — the 
question instantly arises, " How does this doctrine 
of the ideal Church stand related to, stand connected 
with, the actual and visible organization of the 
Christian Society upon earth?" To which ques- 
tion, inevitable though it be, no satisfactory answer 
has ever been given. But, nevertheless, two principles 
may be laid down which will command general 
assent — principles which must govern any answer 
that shall be found. First, it is impossible to identify 
the ideal Church of the New Testament writings 
with any hierarchy, or with any ecclesiastical 
organization upon earth. And this, not only be- 
cause the ideal Church includes the faithful departed 
as well as the living, but also because even as far 
as this world alone is concerned the visible Church 
has been and is, in a multitude of ways, a most 
grievous misrepresentation of the heavenly Spouse 
of Christ. It is easy to understand the charm, the 
overmastering attraction of the Church of Rome, 
from certain obvious points of view. Above all 
she stands pronouncedly for that unity which is 
itself so pronounced a feature in the New Testament 
presentation of the true religion. But even a limited 
acquaintance with history tells us beyond the possi- 
bility of doubt that this Church (which is, and must 
be, "always the same") has been a really hideous 
caricature of the true Bride. It has been the 



66 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

veritable home and haunt of deliberate deceits, of 
boundless ambitions, of merciless cruelty, of ravening 
covetousness, of every sinful passion which is most 
contrary to the Spirit of Christ. If it has to 
a great extent laid aside the exercise of these, it 
is perfectly evident that it has only done so because 
the course of this world has forced such abnegation 
upon it. Moreover, while it is true that the Roman 
Church has purged itself of the worst features of 
the past, it is also true that — taken the whole world 
over — it presents the strangest mixture of what is 
noble and beautiful with what is contemptible and 
revolting, all claiming the same " infallible " founda- 
tion. Again, if it is impossible to identify the Bride 
of Christ in any close way with the Church of Rome, 
neither will anything else satisfy us which it is 
possible to define as " the Church." All such defini- 
tions are clearly more or less arbitrary and exclusive 
on the one hand (for even the test of baptism shuts 
out many " naturally Christian souls " whom we must 
claim for Christ), and on the other hand they are 
too vague and inclusive morally. But, secondly, it 
is equally impossible to assert that there is no 
connection between the ideal Church and the 
organized Society of believers. St. Paul addressed 
that Society, as it existed in his day, as the body 
of Christ. He always had it more or less in view 
when he spoke about the Church. He had apparently 
no inkling whatever of that theory of the " invisible " 
Church which finds so much favour to-day as a 
convenient method of escape from a great difficulty. 
That there are in fact a certain number of souls at 



THE MUSTARD SEED 67 

any given moment which are in a state of grace, 
and destined to remain so, is a statement difficult 
to deny, and it is easy to add that these form the 
true Church of Christ at that moment. But the 
New Testament has no such teaching, and St. Paul's 
way of speaking to the Corinthians and others is 
certainly not based upon it. He writes to them all 
as Christians, and speaks of them collectively as 
the body of Christ. Thus we are obliged to believe 
that there is a real relationship between the ideal 
Church in Scripture and the actual Church in 
history ; and yet we are obliged to believe that the 
relationship is not one of identity, nor yet of close 
correspondence. Apparently it cannot be ascertained 
what the relationship is, and yet our faith will be 
imperfect and our conduct ill-guided if we do not 
acknowledge the relationship. The glory and the 
loveliness of the Bride was meant to shed its lustre 
upon the poorest state of things in the Church below, 
and to add dignity and romance to its lowliest 
duties. Everywhere and in all things Christian 
people were to read the unearthly vision of the 
Bride into the most prosaic and even unpleasant 
features of their "Church" life on earth. That 
involves a great and trying difficulty, which can 
neither be solved by hasty assertions and assump- 
tions on the one hand, nor by evasions and denials 
on the other. 

One thing is clear. It is easy to understand how 
Christian people can take the most opposite views of 
the questions which divide them. But it is impossible 
to understand how they can fail to grieve over those 



68 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

divisions themselves ; still more how they can find 
pleasure in them. They stand in the most glaring 
opposition to the Divine Ideal. They have gone 
far to efface, and that with something like cynical 
effrontery, one of the chief features in that ideal. 
The one Bride of the second Adam, the Mother of 
all living souls, is resolved into — what one cannot 
bring oneself to write. This is not a question of 
ecclesiastical opinion : it is a question of believing 
the Scripture or not. In the whole Bible there is, 
as a fact, no hint that the Church was ever to be 
other than one^ closely and intimately one, whether 
in its ideal or in its actual state. 

It remains, therefore, to see in this parable a 
picture of growth, rapid, unexpected, from extremely 
small and unpromising beginnings to surprising 
greatness ; and this too the growth of a living and 
organized body, having its own proper vitality, and 
remaining essentially one and the same through all 
its processes of development and of differentiation. 
That is the one plain and certain lesson which 
Christian history abundantly confirms and illustrates. 
It is permissible to point out that Christian history 
does at least suggest a further meaning in those 
words, " so that the birds of the heaven come and 
lodge in the branches thereof." That saying may, 
of course, be merely a picturesque touch intended 
to emphasize the unexpected size to which the tree 
has grown. Birds do not perch upon anything weak 
and insecure. But it is easy to find in it more than 
that. These birds have played a part in a former 
parable, that of the good seed, and there they were 



THE MUSTARD SEED 69 

interpreted as messengers of the evil one. Idle 
thoughts, wandering desires, undisciplined imagi- 
nations, the infinite preoccupations of secular life, 
snatch away the seed sown in the heart. Vary this 
imagery a little, and we see in the birds that come to 
lodge in the branches of the mustard-seed a lively 
picture of that multitude of incongruous things which 
have established themselves under the shadow of the 
visible Church. Nothing has, in fact, been more 
remarkable. There is hardly any kind of taste, of 
pursuit, however alien to the meaning and purport 
of Christianity, which has not flourished under the 
patronage of the Church, or at least availed itself of 
its resources. The pleasant pictures which Isaiah 
denounced (ii. 16), and all the costly luxuries re- 
probated in Rev. xviii., have found their chosen home 
in Church establishments. The stern iconoclasm 
of primitive Christianity has given place to the 
passionate cultivation of art for art's sake. Even 
such things as alchemy, astrology, and magic, things 
plainly repugnant to Christian piety, have been 
eagerly pursued by Churchmen, and in the Cloister. 
All this has been the inevitable result of the greatness 
of the visible Church. Whatsoever was " in the air " 
and " on the wing " has been irresistibly attracted to 
the Church, and sooner or later has found a lodgment 
beneath her spreading arms. It may be that our 
Lord intended to intimate this. Anyhow it is true. 



THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN 

St. Matt. xiii. 33. St. Luke xiii. 20, 21. 

Another parable spake he unto And again he said, Whereunto 

them ; The kingdom of heaven is shall I liken the kingdom of 

like unto leaven, which a woman God ? 

took, and hid in three measures It is like leaven, which a 

of meal, till the whole was woman took and hid in three 

leavened. measures of meal, till the whole 

was leavened. 

THE more we dwell upon the Kingdom of 
Heaven as an outward and visible growth — 
the growth of an organized Society which in fact 
rapidly overshadowed all the other religious bodies 
in its neighbourhood — the more we are bound to 
balance this presentation of the Kingdom by the 
one which immediately follows. It is a sore evil in 
religious thought that it is so generally unbalanced, 
and nowhere is the evil more rampant than here. 
For a vast number of people the greatness and the 
oneness of the visible Church are everything. This 
aspect of the Kingdom fills their whole field of 
vision, and they have no eyes for any other. And 
so a partial and one-sided apprehension of truth lays 
them open to miserable servitude to error. On the 
other hand there are multitudes who have seen so 

70 



THE LEAVEN 71 

clearly that the visible Church is not everything, that 
they refuse to believe that it concerns them at all ; 
whereby they give the lie to Scripture and our Lord, 
and disable themselves from laying hold upon one 
whole side of the faith. Most helpful is it, therefore, 
to take note how these two parables of the mustard- 
seed and the leaven mutually supplement and 
complement one another, closely connected and yet 
sharply contrasted. Each is a parable of growth, 
and of growth due to the action of a living force, 
but of growth so different as to have apparently 
nothing else in common. The leaven works secretly, 
it works from within, it works pervasively, it works 
not by an access of size, but by the spread of an 
altered condition. The Kingdom is a Church : it is 
also (and as truly) an influence, a moral, religious, 
and spiritual influence, permeating society and 
penetrating far beyond the limits of any ecclesiastical 
organization. What our Lord meant by "leavened" 
seems to have been much the same that we mean by 
the same word figuratively used. The very general 
acceptance of Christian ideas, principles, convictions, 
of Christian ways of looking at things, of Christian 
standards of right and wrong, has been a marked 
and continuous feature in the history of the world 
since the Kingdom of Heaven was preached, and is 
more marked now than ever. The "three measures 
of meal " of which our Lord speaks x have been taken 
to mean the three continents of Asia, Europe, and 
Africa, which geographically, and historically too, 
hang together. That is not so artificial as it might 

1 Matt. xiii. 33. 



72 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

seem at first sight, because our Lord (as man) knew 
of these three and of no more. Moreover, the in- 
fluence of Christianity has, in fact (with very slight 
exceptions, which do not seem destined to be 
permanent), been confined to the inhabitants of those 
three continents and their descendants in other lands. 
Our Lord may quite well have intended to convey to 
us the assurance that all the populations of the three 
continents should be "leavened" by Christianity. 
The three measures of meal represent the dull inert 
masses upon which Christianity has to exert its 
influence. The hiding of the leaven points to the 
great truth that Christian influences must spread 
from within, not be imposed from without : that they 
work by means of contact, and the most successfully 
when with the least observation. Nothing could be 
truer in the mission field, for example, than the 
saying that the Kingdom of Heaven cometh not 
with observation. It is an enormous hindrance to 
British missions that what they strive to recommend 
is the religion of an alien, a dominant, a much- 
observed and closely - scrutinized race. It is an 
almost equal hindrance that they are worked with 
such an apparatus, so much machinery, so much 
advertisement. The ideal missionary is one who is 
completely "hidden," who is in all respects but his 
Christianity on an absolute level with those among 
whom he works, who excites no suspicions, exacts 
no deference, causes no sense of aloofness. It is 
precisely the " observation " which inevitably attends 
the white man, the European, the creature of another 
world, of a higher civilization, of more complicated 



THE LEAVEN 73 

necessities, which hinders the Kingdom from coming. 
For the leaven is not anything different from the 
mass into which it is inserted. It is simply a piece 
of the same which has already taken on this peculiar 
state of fermentation, and is used to induce the same 
state in the rest. It is the action of like upon like, 
and all it needs is close contact under the average 
conditions of temperature. The fragment of dough 
which is fermenting has the property of setting up a 
similar fermentation in the midst of the great mass 
of dough which lies around it. All religious propa- 
gandas which are really successful work this way. 
The primitive Christianity, e.g.> of the first ages ; or 
the Anabaptist doctrine which spread so rapidly and 
secretly throughout central Europe in the first quarter 
of the sixteenth century. Many people, who have 
only heard of the delusions and excesses of the 
Anabaptists, may be surprised at finding them 
placed side by side with primitive Christians. But, 
indeed, their enthusiasm was at first a genuinely 
Christian one (however mistaken in some things), 
and the methods by which they spread resembled 
with a singular closeness those of the first days. 
They belonged exclusively to the class of workers 
from whom our Lord drew His disciples. It was 
easy for them to go about, because they could 
support themselves at their trade, and the very fact 
that they had a trade gave them an introduction 
everywhere. Trades unions flourished then — as they 
also did, no doubt, in the apostolic age — under 
another name, and fellow craftsmen drew together 
very easily. The Anabaptist missionary tramped on 



74 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

foot with a few clothes and books tied up in a bundle 
with the tools of his craft. His wife tramped beside 
him (just as St. Peter's wife may have done), carrying, 
perhaps, a baby on her back, and leading a child by 
the hand. If they were caught she shared his death, 
as she had shared his life. But they were not 
generally caught. There is no concealment like 
being lost in a great crowd, and no access to the 
many like being as poor as themselves, The 
Anabaptist missionary made shoes, maybe — as St. 
Paul made tents ; and as he sat and worked from 
dawn to dusk in some mean close workshop he had 
the ear of the man beside him, as no one else could. 
And his wife had the same opportunity in the field 
or over the wash-tub. Were they not brothers and 
sisters already, in adversity, in poverty, in oppression? 
There were no good things for any of them in this 
world : only contempt, and toil, and hunger, and 
possibly the sword. Yet if the Kingdom of God 
came, and all good folk were really brothers and 
sisters, then, indeed, it would be happy to live and 
happier still to die. And then the well-thumbed 
Testament or the Anabaptist tract would come out 
of some inner pocket ; and the man would sit with 
his awl in his hand and listen open-mouthed to a 
Gospel which was a Gospel indeed— a Gospel for the 
poor. The woman, too, at the tub would wipe the 
sweat off her face with a soapy hand while she 
listened to the simple talk of the kindly stranger 
wife from far away, who told her of a Christian 
fellowship in which all were equal and all loved 
one another. Thus silently, secretly, swiftly, the 



THE LEAVEN 7S 

contagion of Anabaptist opinion spread to every 
town in Germany, and laid hold upon a large part 
of the population before ever men knew. And thus 
— almost exactly thus — had Christianity spread, 
especially after the growing jealousy of the Empire 
put a stop to the public preaching of the word. The 
leaven was well " hidden " — in the very heart of the 
great cities and of the lower classes — and worked 
there all the more effectively. The Kingdom came 
quickly and surely, just because it was not with 
observation. 

It is evident enough, from a somewhat different 
point of view, that the parable not only illustrates 
very wonderfully the process by which Christian 
ideas spread, but also very accurately the results 
of that process. It is of course opinion, belief, 
conviction, which spreads from mind to mind. The 
mass is " leavened," i.e., it passes into a state which 
is different and to an indefinite degree better. The 
process does not stop until the whole is leavened. 
Christian ideas and ideals are undoubtedly taking 
hold of the world, and there are few countries where 
they have not already a certain acceptance. The 
rulers and people of Japan, e.g., are in the mass 
distinctly unchristian ; yet they have indirectly taken 
over from Christianity, through what is called western 
civilization, a number of Christian ideas and prin- 
ciples. Even Mohammedan countries are slowly 
yielding to the Christian feeling against slavery 
and polygamy. How much this sort of thing 
may be worth it is impossible to say, but it is 
equally impossible not to rejoice at any extension 
of the ethical principles of Christianity. It is, how- 



76 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

ever, absurd to confound, as some do, the acceptance 
of certain Christian ideas with Christianity. The 
leavening process will go on until the whole world 
is more or less affected by Christian opinion, and 
it will be a matter of rejoicing ; but it will not 
mean that all people will be Christians in any 
reasonable sense. For that the two processes of 
growth must go on equally, each in its own way. 
Men must become members of the one body, as 
well as become animated by one spirit. As it is, 
the two processes are most strangely separated. 
Many who cling devoutly to the visible fellowship 
of the Saints are almost untouched by the influence 
of Christian ideals, or even of moral earnestness. 
Many more who have abandoned and even scouted 
Christianity as a religion, and have no name or 
place in the Christian Church, show no disposition 
to shake off the effects and influences of a lofty 
Christian morality. Not unfrequently they remain 
under the spell of their old spiritual environment, 
and are unmistakably Christian in their tone of 
thought. Hence arises endless confusion of thought 
and speech, as to who and what is Christian, who 
and what is not. The Kingdom of Heaven is like 
unto both things — the mustard-tree and the leaven — 
different and indeed contrasted as they are. It will 
be our wisdom to recognize it in both aspects ; our 
privilege to rejoice over its manifestations in both, 
and to anticipate the time when, each manifestation 
being perfect, the two will coalesce, and there shall 
be in all the world one Body of Christ animated 
In every member by one Spirit, and having the 
same mind which was in Him. 



VI. 

THE PARABLE OF THE HID TREASURE 

St. Matthew xiii. 44. 

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field ; 
the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth 
and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. 

IN passing from one parable of the Kingdom to 
another, we are more often struck with a keen 
sense of contrast than anything else. In a moment 
we find ourselves transported into another world of 
imagery, of thought, of doctrine. Surely no one 
can have dwelt with any sort of intelligence upon 
these parables without being shaken and startled 
out of that narrowness of view which so naturally 
besets religion. These seven are set forth with a 
certain equality, as though no one could claim pre- 
eminence over the rest, far less exclusive possession 
against them. Yet they represent totally diverse 
aspects of Christianity. It is, perhaps, impossible 
for anyone to feel anything like an equal interest in 
all these aspects. It is rare for anyone to feel any 
real interest at all in every one of them. Natural 
temperament has much to do with the choice which 
we actually make, and the general drift of our 

77 



78 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

religious training determines the rest. Thus for a 
great multitude of Christians the Kingdom of 
Heaven is either the stately and astonishing growth 
of a Society, or it is the rapid and pervasive spread 
of Christian ideas ; possibly these two things blend 
in their thoughts. In other words they are content 
with the Mustard Tree and the Leaven. These 
interest them ; the rest they accept without interest 
and almost without intelligence. For another mul- 
titude the mystical side of Christianity is every- 
thing : what it brings to them personally in the 
way of a peculiar and a priceless possession, filling 
them with a boundless satisfaction. For them the 
Kingdom is a Hid Treasure, or a Pearl of great 
price. 

It is indeed hardly possible to exaggerate the 
immensity of the transition from the leaven to the 
treasure. For, obviously, the leaven is an influence, 
spreading secretly but surely by contact, by con- 
tagion. Different as it is from the tree, it is yet 
alike in this — that it deals with mankind in masses. 
It may, and does, affect them one by one ; but this 
is not the point. Essentially it communicates to 
them a certain condition, brings them into a certain 
state, which is general and tends to be universal : 
"Till it was all leavened." It is this note of 
catholicity which is common to the tree and the 
leaven. The tree is an organized corporate body, 
drawing up surrounding materials into itself and 
making them part of itself by virtue of its own 
peculiar life. The leaven superinduces its character- 
istic state upon all that it finds to work upon. The 



THE HID TREASURE 79 

note of the treasure and the pearl is also oneness; 
not the oneness of a common life or a common 
state, but the oneness of a solitary and incom- 
municable possession. This is not only different, 
but opposed — so strictly opposed that only in the 
Kingdom of Heaven could the two things co-exist. 
We know perfectly well that the man who finds 
the treasure is not going to share it with anyone 
else. Even less is he who buys the pearl going 
to let other people wear it. There is no law against 
it, of course. The owner of the treasure may endow 
a hospital with it if he pleases, or spend it in feasting 
the neighbourhood. If he pleases — but you know 
he will not. You know he will not, because our 
Lord makes it clear by one of His most character- 
istic touches. When this man chanced to find out 
that such a treasure was, in fact, buried in the field, 
he did not go and tell anyone else ; he did not 
congratulate the owner on the wealth which properly 
belonged to him; he did not form a company to 
buy the field at a fair price. He " hid " the treasure 
found, i.e., he kept his discovery dark, gave no hint 
that the field was anything better than its neighbours; 
bid for it, and bought it in a casual, careless way, 
as though he wanted it for building on or to make 
a brickfield of. That was odious — or at the least 
was objectionable. And there is not anything more 
noticeable in our Lord's parables than His entire 
indifference to the moral character of those whom 
we might call the "heroes" of His stories. The 
very people whom He sets up for us to take example 
by, whom He selects to illustrate the essential 



80 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

characters of His Kingdom, are people whom we 
are bound to reprobate most strongly on His own 
principles. The Unjust Steward is one of these 
" heroes," and he is admittedly odious. But the 
Wise Virgins are not less odious in reality. The 
man who bought a field, concealing the fact that 
it contained a treasure, was fraudulent. The king 
who sentenced a wedding guest to a horrid fate 
because he was not properly dressed was cruel. 
We must see clearly why this is if we are to 
understand the nature of a parable. The reason 
is that the character of these personages does not 
come into question at all, nor their conduct, save 
in some one particular. They are illustrations, 
examples, drawn quite fresh from common life 
without any alteration or extenuation. That is 
their charm and their force. They are absolutely 
natural. In real life most men are more or less 
dishonest — or at any rate fail in straightforwardness 
— under sufficient temptation. So they are in the 
parables. In real life, as a rule, the successful are 
not generous, and the powerful are not just ; neither 
are they in the parables. It makes the parable 
vastly more realistic, and it serves to concentrate 
attention upon the true purport of it. The parable 
is magnificent as a means of teaching, precisely 
because it is so limited. The moral inferiority of 
the characters introduced forces this limitation upon 
our notice. That fact will come out with peculiar 
plainness when we reach some later parables, in 
which the actors have a good deal to say and to 
do. 



THE HID TREASURE 81 

Meanwhile, we are quite sure that the man who 
found the treasure, being in fact of a covetous and 
somewhat unscrupulous disposition, had no thought 
whatever of sharing his treasure. His one thought 
was to make it legally and securely his own by the 
purchase of the field. In this aspect of the Kingdom 
it is an individual possession ; it belongs, whole and 
entire, to the one who has the happiness to make 
it his own, and there is no thought of sharing it. 
That it may be the common property of millions we 
know from other parables ; we could not possibly 
have guessed it from this. It is the very object of 
this similitude to banish everybody else from the 
field of vision. Here is the fortunate individual, 
and here is the treasure. The man possesses himself 
of the treasure — with carefulness, with joy, at a great 
price— that is all. We must ask, we must know, 
what the treasure is. What is it, of which the 
individual Christian may and does possess himself 
if he is happy enough to become aware of it 
and eager enough to pay the necessary price? 
There is not really any doubt, nor has there ever 
been. The mystics of all ages have returned the 
same unhesitating answer, from St. Paul and St. 
John downwards. Our Lord taught the same truth 
before them. In His deepest utterances He always 
proposes Himself as the only adequate and final 
object of our spiritual desire and ambition, Other 
things are of course mentioned ; treasure in Heaven, 
eternal life, the resurrection from the dead, and so 
on. But these are all included in Himself as the 
supreme gift bestowed upon the souls which believe 

G 



82 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

and love. If it is the religious craving of the soul 
to be fed, He is the living Bread which came down 
from Heaven ; if to be illuminated, He is the Light of 
the world, the Light of life, the Sun of Righteousness ; 
if to advance onwards and forwards towards God, He 
is the Way, and the Door, and the Access to the 
Father. He meets us here in Scripture in a hundred 
different ways, always saying, "1,1 Myself, am what 
you want and all you need ; having Me you have all 
things, you are rich beyond the dreams of avarice, you 
sit already at the right hand of God." Amongst 
innumerable promises we may take the one (so 
typical and characteristic) made in Rev. ii. 28 to him 
that overcometh — " I will give him the morning star." 
That sounds, as soon as we hear it, as charming as 
it is unexpected. There is only one morning star 
(the planet Venus when it shines in the east before 
sunrise) ; and that is, in its way, just the most 
radiantly beautiful thing in all the realm of nature. 
It is the very emblem, too, of heavenly purity. It is 
impossible to think of the morning star being 
smirched or discoloured. Then, too, it shines in all 
its beauty, at once soft and brilliant, for hours at 
a time ; and yet hardly anyone ever sees it, because 
hardly any will be at the pains to get up before 
sunrise for the purpose. What, then, does this 
" morning star " — our Lord's gift to " him that over- 
cometh" — really mean? He answers the question 
Himself in chapter xxii. 16, and therefore there 
cannot be any other adequate answer. "/ am the 
bright and morning star." That explains, of course, 
how He can give the morning star (which is one 



THE HID TREASURE 83 

only, and quite separate and unique) to each of the 
myriads that overcome. Christ is not divided, but 
makes Himself over, wholly and entirely, to each of 
the souls that can and will receive Him. 

In the same way He is the hid treasure, and 
He the pearl of great price. There may be other 
explanations, not untrue. But they can only be 
partial, provisional, inadequate. For beyond all 
question he that overcometh — that overcometh his 
disinclination, his repugnance, to give up everything 
else for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake — shall have 
the treasure, the pearl, the morning star ; and 
each of these is Christ — nothing else, nothing less. 
No doubt this is the teaching of the mystics, and 
by many Christians whatever savours of mysticism 
is suspected and abhorred. But it is not possible 
to get rid of Christian mysticism as long as we 
receive the testimony of St. John and St. Paul, 
and (yet more) of our Lord Himself. When a 
man like St. Paul, e.g. t is moved to speak — as he 
sometimes does — out of the fulness of his heart 
about his own religious convictions and aspirations, 
we know that we have got behind all his sermons 
and his arguments ; we have got to the secret spring 
and source of his religious life. We know this when 
we hear him saying to the Philippians, " I count all 
things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge 
of Christ Jesus my Lord : for whom I suffered the 
loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that 
I may gain Christ, and be found in Him." 1 We may 
well suppose that when he penned those words he 

1 Phil. iii. 8, 9. 



84 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

was actually thinking of the merchant who had 
bought and who valued a number of other pearls, 
goodly enough in their way ; but when he found 
the one sold all the rest, and was more than content 
to part with them in order to secure the one of great 
price. For him the pearl and the treasure could 
not possibly have meant (in the final truth of things) 
anything but Christ — Christ to be his by an identity 
of interests, of possessions, of life. " I live ; yet no 
longer I, but Christ liveth in me." 1 With this agrees 
absolutely that saying of St. John, with which he 
sums up as it were all his theology : " The witness 
is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this 
life is in His Son." 2 Therefore it follows as of 
course, " He that hath the Son hath the life, he 
that hath not the Son of God hath not the life." 3 
Mysticism it is, beyond all question. But it is quite 
definite and simple in its way. Christianity in the 
ultimate truth of it means Christ. His gifts, His 
glories, His life are not separate from Himself. It 
is not only through Him, or by Him, or with Him, 
but in Him that all things are to be reconciled to 
the Father, and restored to the perfect unity and 
harmony of the new creation. 

Nothing is more noteworthy in the records of 
Christianity than the way in which this aspect of 
the Kingdom has asserted itself. It has had a 
separate history. It has run in channels of its own. 
It has been most cherished by isolated individuals, 
or groups of individuals, especially in the darkest 

1 Gal. ii. 20. 2 I John v. n. 

8 Ibid. 12. 



THE HID TREASURE 85 

days of the Kingdom. When the visible Church 
was at once everything and nothing ; everything in 
the way of self-assertion, of ambition, of worldliness 
— as though the powers of the world to come had 
exhausted themselves in the development of an 
earthly hierarchy ; nothing in the way of spiritual 
help and consolation ; then men fell back upon the 
mystical side of Christianity and found it sufficient 
for them. St. Bernard of Clairvaux was not 
altogether contrary to the dominant Churchmanship 
of his time ; in some ways he largely influenced it. 
But we are certain that he found no spiritual comfort 
in it. His own religion is expressed in his hymns, 
and is summed up in the holy Name. His inner life 
was completely dominated by the passionate longing, 
not for the gifts of Christ, but for Christ Himself. 
" My Beloved is mine and I am His " had only one 
meaning for him, just as it has only one meaning 
for us. 

The German mystics, the Friends of God, the 
Brethren of the Common Life (to whom Thomas 
a Kempis belonged) were all in the same case. 
Some, indeed, were perfectly orthodox, and lived 
in quiet submission to Rome ; some rebelled more 
or less openly and were bitterly persecuted. They 
had this in common (and it was the crucial point) 
that they regarded with comparative indifference the 
other aspects of the Kingdom, and fixed their eyes 
upon its most inward and spiritual truth. The 
apparent hopelessness of the times helped to force 
this upon them. Nothing seemed to be sown 
anywhere but tares. The mustard tree was very 



86 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

big, but had become the abode of every filthy and 
ravenous bird and of nothing else. The ideas and 
principles of Christ seemed to be totally forgotten 
or perverted. Well, the hid treasure, the pearl of 
price was still there for any individual whose eyes 
were opened to recognize it, whose heart was whole 
to make it his own. The purely personal aspect 
of the Kingdom, in which there are only two persons 
concerned, in which every other creature and every 
other consideration is excluded save only Jesus and 
the soul, that was the aspect which remained for 
men, which gained even a new significance and 
importance, as the night seemed to deepen around 
them. The thoughts, the books even, of this period 
are those which have had the most abiding in- 
fluence. The Imitation of Christ is far from being 
perfect (its limitations indeed are obvious), but 
of all uninspired writings it has been the most 
widely effective, because it is the most simple and 
beautiful presentment of this aspect of the King- 
dom. It does not require much study of religious 
history, although it does require a certain resolute 
openness of mind, to recognize the fact that this 
supreme truth of the Kingdom has been known and 
cherished in all quarters otherwise most diverse 
and opposed. Its predominance cannot apparently 
be connected with anything else in the way of 
religion. We might have supposed that it would 
have been largely found among the Reformed, who 
cast off the yoke of the dominant Church. That 
was not, however, the case. With the exception 
of Luther none of the leaders had any particular 



THE HID TREASURE 87 

sympathy with the mystical side of Christianity. 
The doctrinal, the polemical, aspect of religion 
swallowed up everything. It is on the other side 
of the field that one must look for that personal 
love of the Saviour, for that joy in the finding and 
possessing Him, which is the secret of the treasure 
and the pearl. Even in the England of Elizabeth 
there is more of it to be found among the persecuted 
Romanists than anywhere else. With all his faults 
and failures Pole would seem to have had more of 
it than Cranmer. Nothing is more astonishing than 
the wonderful success of that very unexpected 
movement which we call the Counter-Reformation, 
save the paltry and stupid reasons which people are 
content to give for that success. The few English 
writers who give any attention to the sweeping 
victories of the new Romanism are content to 
ascribe them either to political causes (the tyranny 
of Austria and Spain, etc.), or to ecclesiastical 
causes (the fierce energy of the Papacy, and the 
indefatigable labours of the Jesuits). It is strange 
that any really religious mind should rest content 
with reasons so obviously inadequate. People are 
not made religious or devout by force ; ecclesiastical 
activity does not produce profound spiritual results. 
There must have been some power much greater 
than those assigned in order to account for the 
wholesale return of people to the Roman obedience. 
Probably the cause was a very simple one, and has 
only been overlooked because it was purely religious. 
It is hardly too much to say that for the Reformers 
of the second generation theology was everything 



88 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

and the personal Saviour nothing; at any rate it 
would only be the exaggeration of a very melancholy 
truth. An endless minuteness of theological defini- 
tion, an everlasting insistence upon the dogmatic 
(or, we may say, intellectual) side of faith is after 
all only husks for hungry souls. In measure, and 
in place, it belongs to the Kingdom ; but it is not 
all, or the most necessary. The fatal error of the 
Reformation— at any rate on the Continent, after 
the first ardour of it was past — was just this, that 
it did not offer the Saviour to people as the treasure 
and the pearl. It offered them the dogma of justifi- 
cation by faith only ; it offered them controversial 
statements (chiefly negative) on a hundred different 
points ; but, to put it quite simply, it did not offer 
them the living Saviour to be loved, adored, and 
above all to be possessed. And that was just 
what the great religious teachers of the Counter- 
Reformation did. In their doctrine men and women, 
whose religious needs and instincts were after all 
the same as ours, saw Jesus stretching out His arms 
to them and bidding them come to Him that they 
might be really His and He be really theirs. And 
that told ; not of course with all, or nearly all, for 
a large proportion of Christians are not moved by 
what is admittedly a mystical aspect of the faith ; 
but with all the more simple and devout. 

Political pressure and ecclesiastical activity no doubt 
added much to the overwhelming success of such 
men as St. Carlo Borromeo of Milan, and St. Francis 
de Sales, but the main cause of their success was 
that they preached Christ as a treasure which a man 



THE HID TREASURE 89 

might really acquire. Bitterly disappointed with 
the utter failure of mere doctrine (however much 
it might claim to be founded on the Scriptures) to 
give inward peace and security, men returned in 
crowds to the old system pressed upon them with 
such new persuasiveness. They swallowed its 
dogmas (perverse and false as they largely were) 
with more or less reluctance and dislike, because 
there was about it a wonderful glow and warmth of 
heavenly love, the love of Christ which constraineth. 
No one but a theological student would ever dream of 
opening the books written by the Protestant contro- 
versialists of that period ; they are dust and ashes 
to the soul. Thousands and thousands, who utterly 
reject the whole Papal system, find delight and com- 
fort in the writings of St. Francis de Sales. It will 
appear true that it is more hopeful to preach the most 
faulty kind of religion, with a living Saviour in it, 
than the most correct kind without. In other words, 
Christianity will never hold the souls of men unless 
it include a strong mystical element. In yet other 
words, the Kingdom is hopelessly incomplete unless 
it be presented in its inmost truth as the treasure 
and the pearl. If we bear that in mind, it will account 
for a great many religious phenomena, both in the 
past and in the present, which popular explanations 
(mostly of the shallowest) entirely fail to explain. 



VII. 

THE PARABLE OF THE PEARL OF 
GREAT PRICE. 

St. Matthew xiii. 45, 46. 
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking 
goodly pearls : who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went 
and sold all that he had, and bought it. 

THERE is no discernible difference between this 
parable and the one immediately preceding, 
except in a single point. All the rest — the discovery, 
the joy, the readiness to part with everything else, 
the acquisition — are the same. As to these the only 
thing that anyone could suggest is that the second 
parable indicates more pointedly the eagerness of 
search which preceded the discovery. The merchant 
was undoubtedly engaged in seeking goodly pearls ; 
he had made a speciality of that search and pur- 
sued it with enthusiasm. The other man may have 
become aware of the treasure quite accidentally ; 
or he may have long suspected the existence of some 
such thing and been looking for it. Anyhow, his 
joy when he did know of it may be set off against 
the other's eagerness to find. But in one point the 
contrast is sharp and very instructive. The pearl 
was itself for sale, the treasure was not. The pearl 
could be had (at a great price) straightway, the trea- 
sure could only be had as included in the field. In 
the one case the sacrifice is joyfully made, really and 

90 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE 91 

truly for the treasure, but seemingly and in outward 
form for the field. In the other case any such com- 
plication is unnecessary and excluded. Now if this 
minor and incidental contrast were not substantiated 
by Christian experience, it might be put aside as 
belonging merely to the picturesque detail of the 
parable. Such details are often over-pressed. But 
Christian experience does emphatically substantiate 
the contrast as one which runs right down the cen- 
turies and reappears in all lands and ages. The wit- 
ness of the Spirit and the Bride is this. The treasure 
and the pearl are alike Christ. To "find" Christ, 
to "gain" Christ, to "possess" Christ, to "have" 
Christ for his very own, is the ultimate truth of the 
Kingdom for all that have really grasped its signifi- 
cance. But here comes a difference. For some He is 
a treasure indeed, but hid in the field of the Word and 
Sacraments. Their enthusiasm, their self-sacrifice, are 
devoted to this end, that they may make the field theirs; 
but only for the sake of the treasure which it contains. 
For others, again, He is apprehended, and it is 
impossible to doubt that He is made their own, apart 
from anything else, irrespective of any means of 
grace. In a broad sense it is open to us to call this 
the contrast between the sacramental and the non- 
sacramental aspects of Christianity, both of which 
are sufficiently conspicuous in the Bible, in Christian 
history, and in Christian experience. The evil is 
that people find it so difficult to believe in both. 
The man who has sacrificed everything for the pearl 
charges his brother with folly in spending his all 
on a field which is worth so little, which can be 



92 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

characterized by so many disparaging epithets. Yet 
the field contains for him (not in his own opinion, but 
in truth) the identical treasure which the other has in 
his pearl. On the other hand the man who has with 
joyful self-surrender made the field his own is unable 
to believe that the other's pearl can indeed be the 
equivalent of his hidden treasure. Why not ? Is it 
not obvious that the whole sacramental system* 
inasmuch as it belongs to the grace of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, has only a positive significance. It has 
not any negative meaning. It cannot be read back- 
ward, or made to condemn. To affirm most 
constantly that Christ is found in the sacraments 
is not for one moment to assert or to insinuate that 
He is not found out of the sacraments. If we say 
that baptized infants, dying in infancy, are certainly 
saved, are we justly accused of holding that 
unbaptized infants so dying are certainly lost? Is 
not that the hasty conclusion of vulgar souls which 
measure the breadth of the Divine charity by their 
miserable little earthly footrules? To the same 
vulgarity of soul must be ascribed all similar 
negative conclusions. We affirm that the Body and 
Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and 
received in the Holy Communion. Is that tanta- 
mount to saying that they cannot be received out 
of the Holy Communion ? God forbid. No one — 
no adult at least — can be saved without. "Except 
ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His 
blood, ye have not life in yourselves." 1 "He that 
eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, abideth in 

1 John vi. 53. 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE 93 

Me, and I in him." 1 And this is the condition of 
eternal life. Will anyone affirm that all the many 
then and since who have lived good and noble and 
(often) very Christian lives without the Holy Sacra- 
ment have perished everlastingly? Of course not. 
They may prefer to get out of the difficulty (as it 
seems to them) by a most illogical and untheological 
reference to the " uncovenanted mercies " of God, but 
they can only acknowledge in effect that there is no 
grace of Christ to be had in Sacraments which is not 
to be had also (under certain conditions) out of 
Sacraments. As to " uncovenanted," no covenant 
could be expressed in words more reliable, more 
definite, more conclusive than this : " Whosoever 
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be 
saved": 2 and there are not several kinds of salvation 
declared in the New Testament, but one only, and 
that one by way of being in Christ, and He in us. 
Neither, again, can anyone seriously think that there 
are two kinds of Divine forgiveness of sins for 
Christ's sake, and one kind inferior to the other. It 
is, of course, precisely and identically the same for- 
giveness, as blessed and as effectual, whether we go 
to the priest with a true penitent heart for the 
absolution which he (for our comfort and assurance) 
is commissioned to declare, or whether in the same 
spirit of penitence we look up to the Father who 
ever waits to be gracious unto us. It is the vulgarity 
— the meanness and narrowness — which clings to 
human views of things Divine, which has given such 
unfortunate currency to these miserable negations and 

1 John vi. 56. 2 Acts ii. 21 ; Rom. x. 13. 



94 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

oppositions. The sacramental and non-sacramental 
views of grace are both true. If we deny either we 
come into hopeless conflict with many things in the 
Bible, and with a vast mass of Christian experience 
which no theories can explode, no impatience move 
out of the way. 

It must further be observed, however, that whilst 
the two men obtained the same prize in somewhat 
different ways, it was not open to them, in fact, to 
choose their way. The one could only purchase the 
field which contained the treasure : the other could 
only buy the pearl itself. For the majority of 
Christians, at any rate, the ordinary condition of 
things is represented by the first. In the pious and 
devout use of means of grace (whatever these may 
be) they " find " Christ. They know this field, more 
or less, from childhood; and if they think it worth 
the price the field may always be theirs. The 
question of questions for them is, will they discern 
the treasure hidden in it? Will they learn to love 
and value the field, will they care to make it ever- 
more their own for the sake of the treasure ? There 
is always the danger that they will not, but will end 
by falling into one or other of two opposite errors — 
opposite in appearance, though in fact springing 
out of the same failure : the error of attaching a 
superstitious importance to the field as if it were 
valuable apart from the treasure, or the error of 
abandoning the field as of no value at all. Of those 
who fail to discern the treasure the more ignorant 
fall generally into the former error ; the better 
educated into the latter. There does not seem to 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE 95 

be much to choose between them. Once, however, 
a man has realized what there is for him in the field, 
there is not anything he would not do or suffer to get 
the field and keep it. How many have risked their 
lives in order to be baptized ? How many have 
forfeited their lives through their eagerness to be 
partakers of the holy Mysteries ? To accuse such of 
folly, of extravagance, of superstitious regard for 
externals, would only be an evident token of spiritual 
blindness and poverty. With the eye of faith these 
men saw Jesus beckoning to them ; with the ear of 
faith they heard Him calling to them to arise and 
come to Him : in certain outward ways, indeed, 
accommodated to their bodily nature, but not the 
less really and truly ; they saw, they heard, they 
went ; and if they lost their lives over it, it only 
meant that they sold all they had to buy the field — 
not for the field's sake, but the treasure's. That was 
how the Kingdom was shown to them, and that was 
how they took it by force, not counting their lives 
dear unto them for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. 
Nor would it be otherwise now if persecution revived. 
The extraordinary and undying power which the 
Sacraments have over the minds of men is not due 
to any obstinacy of superstition which can be 
combated by a judicious selection of well - known 
texts. Those that think so are themselves the 
victims of a shallow delusion. The fascination of 
Sacraments is due to the rooted (and well-rooted) 
conviction that in the use of them is to be found 
Christ Himself — the hid treasure of His own parable. 
Nothing can ever argue away this conviction : it is 



96 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

founded on Scripture, on testimony, and on ex- 
perience, which cannot be set aside. On the other 
hand the same witness is equally sure and certain in 
what might seem the opposite sense. Everyone who 
recognizes the supreme value of Christ can become 
possessed of Him, if willing to pay the price. Given 
that willingness, and there is no hindrance. He is 
quite accessible. It needs no intermediary. One 
might be absolutely without Church, without Bible, 
without Christian society, and find no difficulty in 
coming by the pearl of great price. He is always 
willing to be ours : and we are always at liberty to 
part with all that we have for His sake. To all souls 
that will pray, in the spirit of penitence, humility, 
self-surrender, and faith, Christ is directly accessible, 
and not only accessible but obtainable. He is theirs, 
if they count nothing else dear in comparison with 
Him. What is so deplorable is that so many people 
who know this are not content with affirming it, but 
must go on to deny and denounce the other, and com- 
plemental, truth. They rave against sacramentalism 
and sacerdotalism. They lash themselves into a fury 
against such as proclaim the means and ministries 
of grace. They want to narrow down all religious 
experience to the scanty limits of their own. Yet 
the facts of spiritual life, which on a large scale are 
quite unmistakable, tell us plainly that the truth 
lies on both sides at once. It may be annoying 
or even humiliating to the pride of human reason 
and the impatience of human prejudice that it should 
be so, but so it is. The parable of the treasure hid 
in the field is not more true than the parable of the 
pearl, but it is not less true either, 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE 97 

The question, therefore, between the sacramental 
and the non-sacramental conception of Christianity- 
is futile, because both are true ; neither errs, except 
in excluding the other. But the question about the 
one condition which is common to both is immensely 
important and even pressing. It often looks as if it 
were shelved by a tacit conspiracy of silence. 
" Went and sold all that he had " in order to possess 
himself of the one thing needful, in the one case 
indirectly, in the other case directly. While we 
dispute about the directly or indirectly, we all ignore 
the price. And yet it can have but one significance. 
Whatever else a man has of property, of happiness, 
of present possessions, of future prospects, he must 
be absolutely and heartily willing to give it all up 
for the sake of "gaining Christ." That is the very 
least we can make of it. It may be seriously argued 
that a man should not only be willing to do it, but 
he should in fact do it. When St. Anthony of Egypt 
entered the church, and heard the words of the 
Gospel being read, "Go, sell whatsoever thou hast, 
and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure 
in heaven," he never doubted that the words applied 
to him, for he too was very rich — for that age and 
land. Why not? What was there in the lapse of 
two centuries to make the command (or invitation 
rather) inapplicable to Anthony? People take 
for granted that it is not applicable to rich young 
men now, but they are not able to give any reason 
for that convenient assumption except that it is 
convenient. Times and circumstances have changed, 
they say. If they mean that in detail they have 

H 



98 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

changed, it is a truism and irrelevant. If they mean 
that in any substantial sense they have changed, it 
is untrue. Our Lord lived on earth under a settled 
government, in the midst of a highly civilized com- 
munity, where money and property held much the 
same position they do now. The assumption that 
things are quite different now is entirely (though 
unconsciously) due to hypocrisy. People do not 
want to give up anything for religion. On the 
contrary, they expect religion to increase the 
comfort and convenience of their lives. So they 
make believe that these words of our Lord, and the 
many like unto them, have been cancelled by lapse 
of time and change of outward conditions. But 
there is no man can say why they should have 
become obsolete, or when they became so. Putting 
aside these flimsy and hypocritical evasions, it is 
obvious that nothing at all has ever been cancelled. 
The utmost that can be said is this, that the 
invitation to part with everything and to embrace 
a life of " evangelical poverty " cannot be enforced on 
anyone from without. There it is, and the rich man 
is at liberty to take it or leave it. If he take it he 
will have no less reward than the rich man would 
have had if he had followed Christ. If he leave it 
he will suffer the same loss — no more and no less 
— which that man suffered : not the loss of eternal 
life, or of his " soul," or anything of that kind ; but 
simply the loss of a possible happiness, of an 
attainable freedom, in the spiritual life, worth more 
than all the riches of this world. Nothing really 
alters or grows out of date in the great issues of 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE 99 

life. Any man nowadays giving up his property 
from Christian motives would enjoy the same super- 
natural peace and joy which so many of the early 
disciples enjoyed : he would in no wise lose his 
reward. The pearl would be his in a specially 
delightsome way. For the rest it is only necessary 
to insist on the real willingness and readiness to 
give up everything for the sake of Christ. If the 
call came unmistakably, if the necessity arose, could 
they and would they cheerfully part with all, and 
still think themselves more than rich having Him ? 
The difficulty is to know, even in one's own case, 
without having tried. To most people, undoubtedly, 
who have means, the prospect of doing without 
them seems so blankly intolerable that one feels 
the utmost uneasiness on the subject. A small 
deprivation presents itself to them as an im- 
possibility, the thought of which cannot be faced. 
One wishes devoutly that some rich people would 
voluntarily reduce themselves to poverty, just to 
show that it can be done. Meantime it is clear 
that we ought to realize the gravity of the situation. 
We stand accused of a profound hypocrisy. We 
are told over and over again that Christ can only 
be ours at the price of everything else which we 
value. In point of fact we cling to everything else 
with a vigilant and eager tenacity, and we claim to 
have Christ too. We have so accustomed ourselves 
to this attitude (in the very teeth of His words) 
that we have got to look upon it as the very essence 
of enlightened religion. Nothing could be more 
fatal. The one chance we have is to exercise our- 



ioo THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

selves continually in an inward renunciation of all 
wealth, all happiness, for Christ's sake. It is possible 
to detach oneself from all one's belongings, to survey 
them, as it were, from without, to realize what the 
loss of them would be, and to make an offering 
of them all to God — a freewill offering — if it would 
please Him. It is possible to regard all one's 
belongings as not one's own, as blessings renounced 
and only retained from day to day until it please 
Him to take them. In such ways one may test 
and strengthen one's readiness to part with all that 
one has. It is not altogether satisfactory, but it is 
the best we can do, short of actually impoverishing 
ourselves, and we are bound to do it. The common 
attitude of mind, according to which a man clings 
to every possession he has to the last possible 
minute, and when he cannot keep it any longer 
tries to content himself with the thought of having 
the heavenly treasure instead, is unspeakably 
dreadful. It is only necessary to realize what it 
really means to perceive how utterly opposite it is 
to the temper depicted in the parable : "for joy 
thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and 
buyeth that field." 

It is very important to note, in taking leave of 
these two parables, that it is a temper, not a trans- 
action, which is really intimated in that buying and 
selling. Wonderful it is that our Lord can, both here 
and elsewhere, use these terms of commerce in con- 
nection with the Kingdom of Heaven. St. Paul 
could not have done it. And if anyone else but his 
Master had done it, he would assuredly have fallen 



THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE 101 

foul of him. On the face of it, it is clean contrary 
to all that doctrine of the absolute freedom of the 
grace of God, and of our utter incapacity in any 
way to deserve it or to give any equivalent for it, 
which St. Paul preached. It must have seemed to 
him (if he knew of it) extraordinary — one is tempted 
to write unfortunate — that our Lord should have used 
language so calculated to mislead. That no efforts, 
no sacrifices, of our own will procure for us the grace 
and favour of God, is so prominent and so perpetual 
a theme with all great preachers ! So prominent and 
so perpetual indeed that they have created a wide- 
spread though undefined conviction that all efforts, all 
sacrifices, for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake are to 
be regarded with suspicion. Eternal life is the free 
gift of God, which a man is to lay hold of by faith 
alone apart from works. Why then should there 
be any talk of making sacrifices in order to gain 
Christ? It is indeed notable, the perfect uncon- 
sciousness of any such theological difficulty which 
confronts us in our Lord's words, both first and 
last. For it is the same in His message to the 
Church in Laodicea, " I counsel thee to buy of Me 
gold." 1 The doctrine of free grace, of salvation by 
faith apart from works, is of course absolutely true. 
So is this other doctrine of the necessary readiness 
to sacrifice everything. The reconciliation may or 
may not be easy. It makes little difference. What 
is important is not the theoretical reconciliation of 
complemental truths, but the practical holding of 
them fast, however much they seem to differ. 

1 Rev. iii. 18. 



102 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

But it is at least evident that what is insisted 
on is not a transaction, a bargain between the seeker 
and the sought, but a temper in the seeker. He 
is to be so thoroughly in earnest that he will stick 
at no surrender so as he may attain his end. He 
may in fact have nothing to part with ; he may 
not be asked to part with anything : but the readiness 
must be there ; he must be in that mind about it, 
that it will be a joy to him to let anything and 
everything go so he may possess the treasure, the 
pearl. We shall see abundantly hereafter that one 
chief object of the parables of the Kingdom is to 
inculcate tempers, not to intimate transactions. 



VIII. 
THE PARABLE OF THE DRAG-NET 

St. Matthew xiii. 47-50. 

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into 
the sea, and gathered of every kind : which, when it was full, they 
drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, 
but cast die bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world : 
the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the 
just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire : there shall be 
wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

AGAIN a contrast, a transition, so great as to 
-TjL confound our thoughts for the time. It is 
like suddenly opening a door and passing into an 
atmosphere so different that at first we can hardly 
breathe. Whatever we have said or thought about 
the previous parables is no use to us here. We 
have been dealing with the question of choice, 
individual choice, the choice upon which everything 
hangs. And now there is not any choice at all. 
The fishes in the net represent souls — that is certain 
— but the most outstanding feature of the situation 
is that the fishes never exercised any volition what- 
ever. As far as they are concerned their presence 
there is absolutely accidental. They were not 
consulted, nor invited, nor attracted. The fisherman 
who uses rod and line does at least employ the 
persuasion of a bait. That thought has sometimes 

103 



104 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

been read into our Lord's saying, " I will make you 
fishers of men," as though they were to bait their 
hooks with the proffer of eternal life. But that is 
untenable, for the Apostles used nets, chiefly if not 
exclusively. And the net simply encloses the fish 
which happen to be within a certain area. Doubtless 
the fishermen let down their nets where they fancy 
a shoal may be lying, but the fishes have nothing 
whatever to say to it. Is there such an aspect of 
the Kingdom in point of fact? At first thought 
we should have denied it. It seems so incompatible 
with the revealed character of the Kingdom from 
all other points of view. There is something so 
arbitrary, wholesale, promiscuous in the sweep of 
the drag-net ; from the point of view of the fishes 
so accidental and involuntary, that we can see 
nothing Christian about it. Nevertheless, it is 
exactly what has happened. 

Historical Christianity, as viewed from without — 
for statistical purposes, e.g. — is more like the drag-net 
than anything else. People may make what defini- 
tions of religion they like, but when they come to 
take a religious census (as in estimating the number 
of Christians in India) they can only count heads. 
They are within the Kingdom who return themselves, 
or are returned by their parents, as Christians. If 
we consider them it is in most cases a pure accident 
— as far as they individually are concerned — that 
they are Christian. The enormous majority of 
Christians are so by hereditary descent ; and there 
is every reason to believe that very few of them 
would have embraced Christianity had it demanded 



THE DRAG-NET 105 

individual conversion and personal effort. There 
is nothing harsh or sarcastic in such a statement. 
Facts are quite conclusive that the great mass of 
mankind everywhere follow the religious profession 
of their parents and neighbours. Where anything 
like wholesale conversion has taken place it has been 
where the hereditary religious feeling has been greatly 
weakened by exceptional causes, and where the new 
faith has had an unusually powerful backing. In 
a word, the immense majority of professing Christians 
have exercised little more, if any more, choice in 
the matter than the fishes in the drag-net. They 
happen to be enclosed within the sweep of the Gospel 
drag-net ; it is no doing of theirs. They may learn 
to praise and bless God for it, but they can only 
ascribe it to His good Providence. There is another 
thing which we cannot avoid seeing, strange and 
uncomfortable as it is. The fishes within the net 
are neither better nor worse than those outside. 
They are, as it says, "of every kind." Broadly 
speaking they only differ from the rest of their 
kith and kin by the fact (with all that depends upon 
it) of being within the net. Christians at large are 
no better and no worse than the rest of mankind, 
except so far as the fact of being Christians and 
under a certain pressure of Christian opinion has 
affected them for good. It is useless to pretend 
to ourselves that it is otherwise. The average of 
human character is singularly level through all the 
great religions of the world, Christianity included. 
The stern testimony of facts compels us to acknow- 
ledge that this is true, however much we know that 



106 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

it is not all the truth. We may take any ethical 
standard we like which is not distinctively Christian, 
and apply it to the nations of the world ; we shall 
find that while they vary greatly in detail they are 
much of a muchness on the whole. The fish inside 
the net only differ from the others by being inside. 
Now what does this mean, religiously ? It means 
that the great mass of Christians are such, not by 
their own choice or wish, but by the election of 
God. Not differing in any way that we can tell 
from the rest of mankind, they were born of 
Christian parents, in Christian lands, are counted 
as Christians in the statistics of religion, are subjected 
to various Christian influences. Other aspects of the 
Kingdom, totally different, may open out before 
them as they go on, but this is the most certain 
and primary of all. It raises very grave questions, 
which we shrink from answering, but it is the most 
obvious of all true things in the visible Church ; 
and the Kingdom of Heaven in this aspect of it 
is clearly identical with the visible Church. What 
St. Augustine and his friends erroneously deduced 
from that other parable of the good and evil seed, 
they quite rightly deduced from this. The effort 
to form a Christian Society which shall consist 
entirely of good people, or converted people, is 
bound to end in failure. It is impossible to get 
rid of the hypocrites, of the self-deceivers, of those 
whose moral sense is undeveloped, of those who go 
morally astray and cannot be made to see it. No 
doubt the open and flagrant offenders like the man 
at Corinth can be cut off, and ought to be. St. Paul 



THE DRAG-NET 107 

will insist on that being done. But how is St. Paul 
himself to cast out "the covetous man who is an 
idolater?" Covetousness is in the heart. It is a 
greed which poisons all the mind, and injuriously 
affects all the conduct. But it only now and then 
betrays itself in a wrongful deed of which an eccle- 
siastical court can take any cognizance ; and in a 
cautious man, living in a complicated society like 
ours, it would probably never so betray itself at 
all. If we try to go beyond flagrant cases of offence 
against the sixth, seventh, and eighth command- 
ments, we shall be certain to retain in our Society 
of virtuous Christians some people who are distinctly 
worse (and felt to be worse) than those whom we 
cast out. We shall quite easily get rid of the 
publican and the harlot ; we shall have to put up 
with the Pharisee, the Sadducee, the Herodian, who 
are even further from the Kingdom if the truth be 
told. 

We fall back then upon the drag-net. The 
Church is a world-wide Society for holy living; 
but as far as we and they are concerned, it is an 
accident who belongs to it. The election is of God. 
It is of His will that certain lands are Christian, 
that the children of Christians are Christian too 
in a certain true and important sense. We do not 
pretend that they are better than others — than 
Mahometan or Buddhist children, e.g. — but they 
are better off, and for that we thank God. Nor 
can we venture to discern between them ; we see 
generally that they are "of every kind," like those 
outside ; but the separation of the bad from the 



108 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

good must be left to the judgment of God, which 
it were useless or mischievous to forestall. Now 
this is, as anyone may see, that aspect of the 
Kingdom of Heaven which is reflected in the 
constitution of the Anglican Church, and acted 
upon in her baptismal services. It is not the only 
aspect — that should go without saying — but it is 
a true aspect^ and the one which must be put fore- 
most in a national Church. The baptism of infants 
belongs to this aspect of the Kingdom, and has no 
other justification. It seems absurd that baptism, 
which was meant to seal the solemnest and most 
personal of all choices, should be administered to 
babes who have nothing to say in the matter. 
But then our Lord affirmed most distinctly that 
" of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," and we know 
of no other method of admission to the Kingdom 
but by baptism. At any rate, they cannot be in 
the visible Church except by baptism, and it seems 
impossible to keep them out in the face of our Lord's 
teaching. They belong to the Kingdom (or the 
Kingdom to them) precisely in this aspect of it which 
we are considering — as a drag-net. Not by any will 
of their own, but by His grace and election, they are y 
in fact, Christian. Whatever they are going to be, 
they do just now by universal consent belong to the 
Kingdom in a sense, and in a sense which is reflected 
in the visible Church. Their baptism as infants 
expresses that fact ; it acknowledges the Divine 
election to the name and standing and privilege of 
Christians ; it accepts and registers the choice, not 
of man, but of God. What the relation may be 



THE DRAG-NET 109 

between infant baptism and the new birth which 
the sacred writers so often associate with adult 
baptism, is a far more difficult matter to determine 
than eager partisans, on this side or on that, are 
willing to allow. But quite apart from that it is 
clear that the baptism of infants stands or falls 
with the parable of the drag-net and the saying, 
" Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." Babies (as 
such) can only have to do with the Kingdom so 
far as it is a net, including all within a certain area, 
without choice on their part, without moral dis- 
crimination on the part of the net. It is God's 
will, God's election to grace, God's unexplained 
and unchallenged goodness towards the unconscious 
child which is humbly accepted and thankfully 
registered in infant baptism. If people object to 
this baptism, it is (as a rule) because they do not 
believe that the Kingdom really has any such 
aspect. They cannot find it compatible with the 
other and more personal aspects of it. One need 
not be surprised. The apparent incongruity is 
exceeding great. But it is wonderfully reassuring 
to find that the incongruity is just as marked in 
the undeniable facts of Christian history as in the 
parables of the Kingdom. We are compelled often- 
times, whether we like it or no, to think and speak 
of Christianity as though it were a net cast at 
random into the sea, which gathered of every kind 
without discrimination. 

The want of discrimination, however, in the 
present condition of the Kingdom, the impossibility 
of really successful discrimination in the visible 



no THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

Church, is balanced in the parable by the severance 
of the last day. All that we have to call attention 
to here is the obvious fact that our Lord's teaching 
about it is intentionally rudimentary. The fishermen 
"sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but 
the bad they cast away," not troubling themselves 
indeed what became of them since they were use- 
less. "The angels shall come forth" from the 
Heavenly Presence, " and sever the wicked from 
among the righteous, and shall cast them into the 
furnace of fire." Is it not evident that the inter- 
pretation is almost as purely "pictorial" as the 
parable itself? No one believes that the awful 
work of final and eternal discrimination will be 
left to angels. " We shall all stand before the 
judgment - seat of Christ." 1 God Himself must 
"judge the world by that Man whom He hath 
appointed." 2 The soul must see itself in the light 
of the Divine holiness, and accept its own inevitable 
destiny. No creature may come between the Creator 
and the individual soul in that supreme moment of 
its endless life. It is only the merest outsides of the 
tremendous facts and issues of that day which can 
possibly be committed to the ministry of angels. 
We understand, therefore, that here (as in so many 
other places) our Lord does not choose to lift the 
veil from things to come. He has resort, therefore, 
to the conventional language of His time, which 
expressed its real ignorance, its apparent knowledge, 
in terms of angels. 

1 Rom. xiv. 10. 2 Acts xvii. 31. 



IX. 

THE PARABLE OF THE UNMERCIFUL 
SERVANT 

St. Matthew xviii. 23-35. 

Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, 
which would take account of his servants. And when he had begun 
to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand 
talents. But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him 
to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and 
payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped 
him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. 
Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed 
him, and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out, 
and found one of his fellow- servants, which owed him an hundred 
pence : and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, 
Pay me that thou owest. And his fellow-servant fell down at his feet, 
and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay 
thee all. And he would not : but went and cast him into prison, 
till he should pay the debt. So when his fellow-servants saw what 
was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all 
that was done. Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto 
him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because 
thou desiredst me : shouldest not thou also have had compassion on 
thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was 
wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all 
that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do 
also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother 
their trespasses. 

THIS parable does not belong to either of the 
two great groups which form such distinctive 
features of St. Matthew's Gospel. It stands, how- 
ever, in a somewhat close relation to the parables 

in 



ii2 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

of the second group, and is well worth considering 
for that reason as well as for its own sake. We 
have already seen that the object of a parable may 
be to inculcate a temper rather than to intimate 
a transaction. And that is altogether the case in 
the present instance. Our Lord seems to go out 
of His way to tell us that He is talking about the 
Kingdom of Heaven. That Kingdom indeed has 
been in His mind and the disciples' in their previous 
discourse (see chapter xviii. 1-4) ; but the conversa- 
tion has touched on many points since then not 
especially connected with it. In verse 23, however, 
our Lord proclaims with emphasis that it is the 
Kingdom and nothing else that He is going to 
speak about. And then He tells them a story which 
has no other point whatever than to show how 
necessary it is for a Christian to have a forgiving 
and a generous temper in the face of wrong and 
injury. Thus the Kingdom is identified with a 
certain temper — with a virtue which is not at all 
distinctively Christian, although it is urged here on 
Christian grounds. It is especially important to 
grasp this peculiarity here, because it prepares us 
to recognize the same thing under more startling 
conditions elsewhere. Here, at any rate, it is easy 
to allow that our Lord has only one object in view 
— to lay stress upon the duty of forgiveness. The 
apparatus of the parable (if one may call it so) is 
of the simplest. It only exists in order to throw 
up into the strongest relief the failure of the 
servant to show the kind of temper which is 
proper to the Kingdom, and therefore necessary 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT 113 

to salvation. It is not possible to translate the 
story as it stands into a Gospel, although of course 
it suggests the Gospel. The King of Heaven, whom 
we have offended, never commanded us and ours 
to be sold — or anything in the least resembling it. 
The king in the parable is an earthly monarch pure 
and simple, acting upon impulse, at one moment 
angry and vindictive, at the next warm-hearted and 
generous. In him, as in other men, is good and 
evil, but the good triumphs this time, as the evil 
might another time. He is of the earth, earthy ; 
he is only part of the apparatus of the parable. 
The whole moral of the story is in the behaviour 
of the forgiven servant towards his fellow-servant. 
This alone belongs to the Kingdom — or rather is 
held up as incompatible with it. The Christian who 
has been forgiven so much, forgiven so graciously, 
cannot possibly so far forget himself as to show a 
vindictive and resentful temper towards his fellows. 
If he does, his own forgiveness stands in imminent 
danger of being cancelled and withdrawn. The 
miserable fate of the unmerciful servant, who has 
aroused afresh the wrath of a passionate tyrant, will 
find its counterpart in the dreadful destiny of the 
unforgiving Christian. Not that our Heavenly 
Father can ever be like the king in the parable — 
but that it is possible for us to end as the servant 
ended. 

The Kingdom of Heaven, therefore, is a temper — 
from this one particular point of view. It is purely 
ethical. It has no connection with Church, or Sacra- 
ments, or Preaching, or devotion to a Personal 
l 



U4 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

Saviour. It is Christian in motive, because it is 
the temper of one who knows himself forgiven an 
immeasurable debt. But it is simply a temper, one 
that has always been known and admired among 
men ; one also that is not at all conspicuous among 
Christian people. It is obvious that our Lord is 
speaking from an extremely limited and unusual 
point of view, and that He has very grave reasons 
for doing so. " The Kingdom of God," says St. Paul, 
having in mind certain very common and very gross 
errors, " is not eating and drinking, but righteousness 
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost" 1 These 
things too are ethical ; but they are also spiritual, 
they belong to the supernatural order, they are in 
touch with the powers of the world to come. That 
cannot be said of a forgiving temper. Like courage, 
chastity, and other virtues, it is common to men, 
although not common in men. Christian teaching 
and grace may do much to educate and strengthen 
it, but they do not create it. All the more remark- 
able it is that our Lord counts it so absolutely 
necessary as to identify the Kingdom of Heaven 
with it. We remember of course that this is far 
from being the only place where He shows a pro- 
found anxiety to force upon us the primary need 
to have a forgiving temper. He has actually intro- 
duced it into the Lord's Prayer, and put it into 
our own lips. We may not even ask forgiveness 
without assuring Him that we too forgive, without 
limiting our own claim upon His mercy by the 
mercy which we show ourselves. That stands all 

1 Rom. xiv. 17. 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT 115 

alone. In no other respect do we propose ourselves 
as an example to Him ; nor should we dare to do 
so here if He had not forced it upon us. A really- 
forgiving temper is quite rare, even among sincere 
Christians ; and yet all Christians are obliged to 
speak to God, Who knows their hearts, as if they 
forgave all things to all men. We may say with 
Mr. Ruskin that no one ought to use the Lord's 
Prayer who is not (in this as in other respects) a 
consistent follower of Christ. But that comes at 
once to nought, because there is no authority which 
can decide the question. Least of all could men 
undertake to label themselves as truly consistent 
Christians. We must leave the Lord's Prayer to 
all that, however doubtfully or dolefully, find it in 
them to say, " Our Father " ; and if the prayer itself 
condemn the greater part of them that use it, we 
cannot help it. Our Lord has thought it best to 
put that condemnation into it, because He would 
by any means force upon our attention the absolute 
need of a forgiving temper in the Kingdom of 
Heaven. It is a very strong step to take, so strong 
as to be almost appalling ; but it is only in keeping 
with all His utterances upon the subject. He never 
speaks so strongly about anything else. 

In the face of this it is an extremely disquieting 
thing to note how difficult and unpopular a grace 
this spirit of forgiveness is. Apparently it is even 
more difficult and unpopular in our own day and 
country than ever before or anywhere else. The 
fact has perhaps escaped attention for reasons which 
will presently appear, but when these reasons are 



n6 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

considered it will hardly be denied. If we compare 
society as it now is (amongst ourselves) with what 
it was in our Lord's time, we must be aware of 
two great changes which affect the forgiveness of 
injuries. 

Firstly, society is organized to a great and in- 
creasing extent. A man's life is so parcelled out 
amongst a variety of unions or communities great 
and small that only a fragment of his life (and that 
perhaps the least interesting and important) is left 
him in which to recognize and practise Christian 
forbearance. To be revengeful, unrelenting, habitu- 
ally exacting of the uttermost farthing, is, of course, 
forbidden to a Christian as an individual. But as 
a citizen, as a member of a syndicate, a federation, 
a union, he may indulge in all these things ; nay, 
he is almost bound to. It would be absurd to ask 
whether any of these unions (whatever their name 
or constituency) practise Christian forbearance or 
forgiveness. Their raison d'etre is to enlarge the 
profits and to increase the power of their members, 
and to that end they are inexorable, often un- 
scrupulous, sometimes cruel, in the pursuit of their 
own policy. Whatever may be said for trades- 
unions (and no doubt they have done immense 
good, especially by substituting class-selfishness for 
that individual selfishness which is so much worse), 
it is nevertheless a simple fact that their success 
ultimately rests upon the terror which they inspire. 
It is a sacred duty among trades-unionists to hate 
a " blackleg," to heap upon him every species of 
abuse, to do him any harm that is possible. Of 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT 117 

course, the leaders and responsible persons do not 
commit violence themselves — they ignore it. What 
they do is by systematic violence of language to 
produce an atmosphere of intense hatred, out of 
which every other possible kind of violence is bound 
to spring. There really is not any doubt about it. 
One may have an intense sympathy with the 
workmen as against the employers. One has all 
the same to confess that the workmen's unions are 
absolutely merciless towards the only people they 
really fear — those members, namely, of their own 
class who cross their purposes by playing (as it 
seems) into the hands of the employers. Not 
equally passionate (for there is no temptation), but 
equally unscrupulous, maybe in a cold, business- 
like way, are the federations, the syndicates, the 
trusts, on the other side. Can this be right from a 
Christian point of view? As a matter of words, 
people will agree at once that it is not. But they 
do not see the root of the mischief; they do not 
see that a man has no right to hand over his 
conscience to a society, to a union of any sort. 
As a Christian he is bound by the laws of Christ 
in all the length and breadth of his life. If the 
union to which he belongs pursues its ends by 
means which are merciless, harsh, cruel, he is bound 
at any cost to himself to quit the union. It may 
be very difficult to distribute the responsibility for 
corporate sins against the law of forbearance, but 
the responsibility exists ; a man cannot clear him- 
self of it by pleading that in his private capacity 
he behaved in a Christian way. Here is one terrible 



u8 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

danger of the present day. Men cut up their lives 
into private and public ; and the public is by far 
the larger and more important of the two; and it 
does not even pretend to be regulated by the laws 
of Christ. 

Secondly, modern life is so admirably "policed," 
and so wonderfully protected from any aggression 
of one upon another, that many of us never have 
anything to forgive — worth speaking of. In its 
way that is a great gain. It puts us under an 
enormous obligation to modern civilization, which 
takes such care of us and guards our "rights" so 
successfully. God forbid that we should regret the 
expulsion from our midst of the oppression and 
wrong which used to be rampant in most places, 
and are still in some. But we have to remember 
that we get on so well and comfortably with our 
own countrymen, not because we and they are good 
and kind and considerate, but because we are so 
perfectly fenced by law and order that we have 
nothing to fear. Life is so minutely arranged for 
us (even in crowded cities) that our neighbours 
have, as a rule, no chance to injure us ; therefore 
we get on very fairly well with them. So it has 
come to pass that even good people have got into 
the way of thinking that their religion is exclusively 
personal and domestic ; that they may be perfectly 
hard and indifferent as against the world at large ; 
that their duty towards their neighbours is limited 
to a vigilant care lest anybody should get any 
advantage of them or fail to render to them the 
utmost that is due. It is very difficult in practice 



THE UNMERCIFUL SERVANT 119 

to indicate the more excellent way; but it is clear 
that there lies herein much danger to our souls. 
The spirit of forbearance, of forgiveness, was never 
meant to be thus artificially limited. Being so 
limited as it is it never gets any exercise, and 
always tends to become weaker and weaker. If 
we honestly asked ourselves how many injuries we 
had forgiven during the last twelve months, the 
answer would be astonishing. After deducting 
cases of imaginary affront, or of trivial annoyance, 
we should generally have to confess "we have 
forgiven nothing, because we had nothing to for- 
give." But what if we had? What if we had 
suffered wrong as Christians did in the first ages, 
as Christians do now in the Turkish Empire? 
With our keen sense of justice, with our high 
notion of our own rights, with our long immunity 
from oppression, could we find it in our hearts to 
forgive? All the appearances, all the probabilities, 
are against it. The old Adam within us would 
rise in wild rebellion against the wrong and the 
wrong-doer. We should protest with vigour, resist 
with courage, endure the worst with passionate 
defiance ; but should we be able to forgive ? 
Alas ! our very virtues, the virtues of our race 
which have made it foremost in the world, would 
all make for failure and condemnation in this 
respect. Moreover the slight evidences which meet 
us in daily life are almost all of a disquieting 
character. It is painful indeed to notice, e.g., how 
few devout communicants have any notion of really 
forgiving an injury. It is always just this which 



120 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

they cannot and will not put up with. As long 
as they are "let alone," they are exemplary, patient 
of suffering, kind to others, zealous for religion. 
But let someone put out his hand and touch them 
wrongfully, and the passion of resentment flares 
up in their souls, and is not quenched ; and the 
Christian life which was so promising begins from 
that day to decline until it falls to the ordinary 
level we know so well. It is true that our Lord 
spoke with more urgency on this topic than on 
any other ; it is also true that Christian experience 
has abundantly justified all that urgency. The 
difficulty of being forgiven is as nothing to the 
difficulty of forgiving. Yet He has made "to be 
forgiving " a necessary condition of " to be forgiven " ; 
and He Himself cannot unmake it. The Kingdom 
of Heaven is like this, essentially, unalterably. 



X. 
THE PARABLE OF THE LABOURERS 

Si. Matthew xx. 1-16. 

For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, 
which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vine- 
yard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, 
he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, 
and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said unto them, 
Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. 
And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and 
ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went 
out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand 
ye here all the day idle ? They say unto him, Because no man hath 
hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard ; and 
whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. So when even was come, 
the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and 
give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when 
they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every 
man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they 
should have received more ; and they likewise received every man a 
penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the 
goodman of the house, saying, These last have wrought but one hour, 
and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden 
and heat of the day. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, 
I do thee no wrong : didst not thou agree with me for a penny ? Take 
that thine is, and go thy way : I will give unto this last, even as unto 
thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is 
thine eye evil, because I am good ? So the last shall be first, and the 
first last ; for many be called, but few chosen. 

IT is not altogether strange that it should have 
been St. Peter who drew from our Lord both 
this parable of the Kingdom and the last. For 

121 



122 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

good or evil he was always foremost, prompt to 
act and quick to speak. The mistaken ideas which 
he shared no doubt with the rest he was the only 
one to put into words. He was but the spokesman 
of the Twelve when he made his grand confession 
at Caesarea Philippi, and so he was no doubt when 
he earned the frightful rebuke, "Get thee behind 
Me, Satan." Like other people he was under 
various misapprehensions about the characteristic 
features of the Kingdom of Heaven ; unlike them, 
he expressed his errors in a crude sort of way, and 
so gave our Lord the opportunity of setting him 
(and all men) right 

What he had failed to understand on the previous 
occasion had been this — that forgiving people is not 
a matter of arithmetic, or of "limited liability" in 
the Kingdom ; it is a temper, essential and constant, 
which only grows stronger as it is called into play. 
What he failed to understand on this later occasion 
was even more serious, for he completely mistook 
the kind of temper with which a Christian must 
regard the rewards of the Kingdom. And that 
mistake was peculiarly unfortunate, because un- 
doubtedly our Lord had a great deal to say about 
those rewards. He had spoken of them without 
reserve as far exceeding any earthly objects of 
ambition. The rich young man who was asked 
to give up all his earthly wealth was promised 
" treasure in heaven " as more than compensation. 
It would have been perfectly possible and natural 
to apply the theory of "enlightened selfishness" to 
our Lord's doctrine of the religious life, and in point 



THE LABOURERS 123 

of fact St. Peter did understand Him in that sense. 
Rich men, he heard our Lord say, would have a 
tremendous difficulty in entering the Kingdom of 
Heaven — a difficulty amounting (humanly speaking) 
to a practical impossibility — because it is so hard to 
give up the substantial gratifications of the present 
(such as they are) for the vaguely-discerned rewards 
of the future. Without such renunciation these 
latter could not, of course, be had. Then St. Peter 
broke in with the question, " Lo, we have left all 
and followed Thee; what then shall we have?" 
What are we to get? An odious question, which 
betrayed so palpably the vulgarity of mind which 
made it possible ! What are we to get — we, who 
have not gone sullenly away like yonder rich man ; 
we, who left our nets and our business at Thy 
word ? That is the genuine commercial spirit, 
which unconsciously exaggerates the little sacrifices 
it has made, which is eager to know what recom- 
pense it may reckon on. Implied, of course, was 
the contention that as they had given up more 
than others they were bound to get more in return. 
A million voices of Christian people throughout the 
world uttered themselves in St. Peter's words, " What 
then shall we have ? " 

It is wonderful to observe how our Lord responded 
to a demand so odious, in such bad taste, springing 
out of so much error. In His words (as we see), 
in His tones (as we may be sure), there was no 
severity, no reproof. It looked indeed at first 
sight as if He recognized and allowed that claim 
for exceptional payment (so to speak) for exceptional 



i2 4 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

services. In the "regeneration" the Twelve should 
sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 
What a glow of satisfaction, of gratified ambition, 
must have come over St. Peter's mind as he heard 
that. Doubtless he himself, as the foremost of that 
devoted band, would occupy the highest throne 
and judge the tribe of Judah which God had chosen 
to be specially His own. Afterwards, in the light 
of later words and subsequent events, his thoughts 
will have been very different. In the "regenera- 
tion" there could be no possible place for any joy 
of pre-eminence, of mastery, of rule over others. 
Thrones would be no reward, and judging others 
no gratification. All such ambitions belong to this 
generation, and are bound to disappear in the 
regeneration. Then also it would occur to him that 
to have to judge the tribes of Israel would be as 
undesirable a business as could be conceived. Moses 
himself had found it a task beyond even his magni- 
ficent resources of strength and patience. Nothing 
in Israel's story is more wonderful or more sad than 
the way in which that great and faithful servant of 
God found himself thwarted, defeated, broken by 
the people whom he led out of Egypt. Not only 
did they die themselves, in spite of him, in the 
wilderness ; they even made him share their sentence 
of exclusion from the Holy Land. Nothing more 
intractable could be conceived than the tribes of 
Israel, then and always ; nothing more hopeless than 
the task of judging them. What was it then, this 
prize which looked so splendid ? What did it mean ? 
That devotion to the Master in this world, and re- 



THE LABOURERS 125 

nunciation of earthly prizes for His sake, shall lead 
on to far greater and more onerous responsibilities 
and duties and labours in the age to come. Simply 
that. There is no room in this promise (howsoever 
it may be fulfilled) for any expectation of pleasure, 
or satisfaction, or triumph ; there is no prospect of 
anything but larger opportunity of spending and 
being spent in the service of others. This should 
be the reward of St. Peter, of the Twelve, and in 
proportion of all who had made real sacrifices for 
the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. 

Then follows that parable of the Kingdom which 
has been so little understood in spite of the pains 
spent upon it. The motive of it has been too simple 
to be perceived amidst the laborious searchings of 
commentators and preachers. In the Kingdom of 
Heaven the commercial spirit, the temper which 
demands proportionate payment for efforts and 
sacrifices, has absolutely no place. That is all. 
As in so many other parables it is a temper which 
is inculcated (or rather it is a temper which is 
reprobated), it is not a transaction which is intimated. 
Read it as a transaction, in which God is concerned 
on the one hand and His ministering servants on 
the other, and we fall at once into difficulties out 
of which nothing can deliver us but the most 
arbitrary assumptions. It is not true, e.g., that the 
reward which awaits the servants of God is in any 
real sense uniform — so that it may be fairly repre- 
sented by the "penny" paid to each. That is 
against the whole drift of New Testament teach- 
ing, and it could not have been our Lord's intention 



126 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

to teach it here. It is not true that the "penny" 
would have been worth more to those who had 
laboured long and hard to earn it. On the contrary 
to these labourers, as to the average labourers every- 
where, the extra toil was a cause of annoyance and 
discontent, Still less is it any part of the parable 
that work for such a Master is its own reward — is, 
in fact, a privilege. These labourers would have 
laughed any such notion to scorn, could they have 
been got to understand it. Once more the house- 
holder's plea, that it was lawful for him to do what 
he liked with his own, is untenable now — whatever 
it was then. It belongs to a theory of property 
which is still freely acted on, but already with a 
certain shame. No really good man, employing 
labour, would act now as this householder acted ; 
or, if he did, he would be held guilty of caprice 
which could not be justified. When it came to the 
turn of those first engaged he would say to them, 
" I am not legally bound to give more to you than 
to these last ; but I think I ought to pay you more 
for your extra work, and here it is." To suggest 
that it can be " a righteous thing with God " to treat 
His servants as a good landlord would be ashamed 
to treat his labourers is useless. The fact is that 
both householder and labourers in the parable are 
no better and no worse than they were in real life. 
He is capricious and unjust ; they are greedy and 
discontented, There is not anything in the Kingdom 
of Heaven which corresponds to the very unsatis- 
factory transaction which forms the story of the 
parable. It is the temper, the attitude of mind, 



THE LABOURERS 12; 

which the parable serves so admirably to bring 
home to us, which is alone important — profoundly 
important, because it has absolutely no place in 
the Kingdom. Like the unforgiving spirit, the 
commercial spirit is utterly banned, however 
naturally and with whatever excuses it may assert 
itself. There can be no rivalries, no jealousies, no 
clamours, no demands, " what then shall we have ? " 
in the Kingdom. Doubtless it has its rewards, 
rewards quite freely spoken of by the Master and 
quite legitimately anticipated by the servant ; but 
there is nothing commercial and nothing competitive 
about them. 

As to the distribution of these rewards indeed, 
there are two things certain. Nothing done for 
the Master will be unrewarded, not even a cup 
of cold water given to a disciple, much less the 
heroic sacrifices of heroic souls ; nothing will fail 
to be recompensed beyond all desiring or deserv- 
ing; of which great promise there be many start- 
ling foretastes even in this world. Again, there is 
nothing whatever said or known as to how the re- 
wards distributed will compare with one another. If 
anyone asks, " what then shall / have ? " the book 
is shut in his face, and he only hears that " the last 
shall be first, and the first last"; in other words 
it is the unexpected that will happen. In this world 
we are doomed to live under the regime of com- 
petition. We may hate it, but we have to resign 
ourselves to it, and console ourselves with thinking 
that a law so deeply impressed upon nature must 
on the whole be good. But it has no place in the 



128 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

Kingdom of Heaven, and this parable was designed 
to force that fact upon us in a way very much 
more picturesque and therefore more permanently 
telling than any other which could have been 
adopted. 



XL 



THE TWO PARABLES OF THE 
VINEYARD 

St. Matthew xxi. 28-32 ; 33-43. 

But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came 
to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. He 
answered and said, I will not : but afterward he repented, and went. 
And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and 
said, I go, sir; and went not. Whether of them twain did the will 
of his father ? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, 
Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the 
kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way 
of righteousness, and ye believed him not ; but the publicans and the 
harlots believed him; and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not 
afterward, that ye might believe him. 

Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which 
planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress 
in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into 
a far country : And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his 
servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. 
And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed 
another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than 
the first ; and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent 
unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the 
husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the 
heir ; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And 
they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. 
When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto 
those husbandmen? They say unto him, He will miserably destroy 
those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husband- 
men, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. Jesus saith 
K 129 



130 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which 
the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner : this 
is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes ? Therefore say I 
unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to 
a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. 



IN St. Matthew xxi. there are two parables — of the 
two sons, and of the wicked husbandmen — which 
are somewhat less definitely parables of the Kingdom 
than the others in our list. They do not begin with 
the formula, " The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto," 
and in the application of them our Lord speaks 
of "the Kingdom of God." But this (though un- 
usual in the first Gospel) is not discernibly different 
from the more familiar phrase, and its employment 
warrants us in claiming these parables also for our 
present purpose. They differ widely in scope from 
most of the others, and are all the more valuable for 
that reason. The story of the two sons is too short, 
and in its moral too obvious, to be in itself instruc- 
tive. No one, however stupid or prejudiced, could 
hesitate to answer, " The first," when asked which 
of the two was the better son. A rude manner and 
unpromising appearance is always a less evil than 
disobedience and deceit. It is in the application of it 
made by our Lord to the various classes of society in 
Israel that the interest lies. The publicans and 
harlots, He said — i.e., the disreputable people 
generally — were more likely to find their way into 
the Kingdom than the chief priests and elders of the 
people. We are not surprised at that. The great 
parable of the Pharisee and the Publican has made 
the idea very familiar to us. It is clear that our 



THE VINEYARD 131 

Lord felt and spoke of the class which was not 
respectable — which formed the "Bohemia" of His 
day — as if it were on the whole more hopeful than 
the strictly religious class. Underneath their ir- 
religion and their vice He recognized in many of 
them an "honest and good heart," which would 
respond to His teaching when it got a chance. He 
saw also that they had more readiness to take a line 
of their own, and were less under the evil bondage 
of the example and opinion of their fellows than 
those who belonged to the religious world. Most 
of all, He knew that a disreputable life is a less 
fatal hindrance to self-knowledge and self-renuncia- 
tion than pride and hardness and the habit of looking 
down upon others. Therefore His relations with the 
Bohemia of His day were sufficiently friendly to 
scandalize even those who wished Him well. They 
were, perhaps, quite genuinely sorry to hear of that 
supper in the house of Levi the publican, where our 
Lord was mixed up with a crowd of people, male 
and female, whose antecedents were worse than 
doubtful and whose characters were very shady. 
It was indeed impossible that He could have felt 
at home with them. Yet He was better pleased 
there than at the table of Simon the Pharisee, 
because the barrier which separated Him from them 
was far less hopeless. In point of fact many a 
publican left his odious gains, and many a harlot 
left her sinful life, at His call. We do not know 
that any Scribe or Pharisee left his self-esteem and 
self-importance at His word. Such is human nature, 
that the vices which are esteemed (and justly) to 



132 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

be lower and more disgraceful often leave untouched 
the capacity for moral heroism and for generous self- 
sacrifice : whereas nothing is so fatal to this capacity 
as the selfish habit of mind which often goes along 
with an extreme and studied respectability of life. 
It is quite notorious that the men — and women too, 
when they get a chance — who do splendid things for 
others, are more likely to be horrid blackguards than 
to have a reputation for piety. Chivalry, generosity 
of soul, a certain recklessness in seizing upon some 
high ideal and following it even unto death — these 
virtues do flourish in Bohemia, unchoked by the 
vices which we should have expected to destroy 
them. Now it is precisely these virtues which get 
people into the Kingdom of Heaven, in our Lord's 
way of looking at it. "The Kingdom of Heaven 
sufTereth violence, and the violent take it by force " — 
take it by storm, as we should say now. What is 
wanted is a certain recklessness which does not count 
the cost, which cares nothing what other people will 
say, which scarcely stops to think what it involves ; 
and this happy recklessness is extremely rare in 
people of carefully-ordered lives. 

It seems absolutely necessary that we should have 
our eyes open to this fact about the Kingdom, be- 
cause it enables us to estimate at its fair value a 
great part of the moral teaching of modern fiction. 
Much of that fiction has of course no moral teach- 
ing, and does not pretend to. But where it has, it 
commonly takes the line of glorifying the disreput- 
able side of society, or at least of showing how much 
of what is admirable may be found in the most 



THE VINEYARD 133 

reckless and deliberate of sinners. Mixed with much 
petulant (and perhaps self-interested) revolt against 
the ordinary moral standards of Christianity, there is 
an honest and righteous recognition of the truth so 
often and so strongly asserted by our Lord. The 
mere fact of being conformed to the moral standards 
of the day does involve two very serious dangers. 
The more obvious of the two (and therefore the less 
dangerous) is that of self-satisfaction, of censorious- 
ness, of despising others. The more subtle and more 
commonly fatal is that of conventionality. The 
Kingdom of Heaven makes its most characteristic 
appeal to the chivalrous instincts, the heroic impulses, 
the latent capacities for a splendid self-devotion, 
which are the very best things in our nature. But 
the very fact of being conformed to moral standards 
gives those standards, and the general body of aver- 
age opinion by which they are supported, a tre- 
mendous power over us. They tend to restrain us 
as much from rising above them as from falling 
beneath them. That which should only support us 
at a certain level also keeps us at that level. The 
instincts and impulses of our nature, habitually 
checked when they make for evil, are similarly 
hampered when they make for good. It will always 
be true then that " Bohemia " will stand in some 
ways more closely related to the Kingdom of Heaven 
than the " religious world " : and to this extent the 
moral teaching of modern fiction is justified. But 
beyond pointing out and dwelling upon this fact 
(for which we are indebted to it), modern fiction has 
no message, no Gospel. It cannot seriously desire 



134 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

its readers to become publicans and harlots in order 
to attain to their freedom from the dreadful trammels 
of conventionality : and it has not anything else to 
propose. It is, alas, beyond its purpose or its power 
to declare that " conventionality " in religion (or even 
in morals) is excluded and condemned by almost 
every word our Lord uttered : that the " enlightened 
selfishness" which is the dominant motive of the 
religious world is the precise opposite of what He 
taught : that the appeal to what is chivalrous and 
disinterested in men, although it may be latent, is 
only latent in Christianity because it has been 
wilfully obscured. Take two lives, familiar enough 
to us — the life of a respectable churchgoer on the 
one hand, who desires to " make the best of both 
worlds," and the life of some disreputable creature 
on the other. In the eyes of men these lives are 
divided by a great gulf. In the eyes of Christ they 
are equally unsatisfactory, although there are ele- 
ments of hopefulness about both. That life is the 
more hopeful of the two which is the more likely to 
catch the infection of a real and true and unselfish 
enthusiasm for Him and for His service. 

The second of these two parables of the vineyard 
is once more astonishingly different in its scope, and 
has to be classed with the parables of the mustard 
seed and of the drag-net as dealing with the King- 
dom in its outward and visible aspect. For the 
vineyard of St. Matthew xxi. 33-43, is for all 
practical purposes the Church. " The Kingdom 
of God shall be taken away from you and shall be 
given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." 



THE VINEYARD 135 

What is that but a prophecy that the visible Society 
which in past history had been Jewish should in 
future history be Christian? The vineyard with its 
fence and winepress and tower is here, as in Isaiah v., 
the Church of God with its separate character, its 
peculiar institutions, its various arrangements for 
the promotion of holy living. It had been the 
property of the Jews — their private and inalienable 
property as they fancied — only theirs on lease and on 
conditions as God continually warned them. And 
now the end was come, and it was about to be trans- 
ferred to another "nation." This is remarkable, 
because it puts in the most emphatic way an aspect 
of the Kingdom which even St. Paul, Apostle of the 
Gentiles as he was, scarcely seemed to realize. For 
him the Church always seemed to have a double 
character, Jewish and Gentile, the two walls which 
found their common corner-stone in Christ. Here 
the transfer is absolute and the distinction sharp and 
final. And so, of course, it was in effect. The 
Jewish remnant which believed had no lasting 
influence. The community of Israel re-formed itself 
after the destruction of Jerusalem, and lived on 
outside the Church of God, having lost the vineyard 
for ever. And the Christian Church which had, or 
rather was, the vineyard, was for all intents and 
purposes a Gentile Church. What even the Apostles 
did not altogether foresee (unless it were St. John at 
Ephesus) came to pass, according to the word of 
Christ. Thus we have established, upon a basis 
which cannot be shaken, the historical continuity 
between the Church of the old dispensation and that 



136 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

of the new. The institution itself — the Kingdom of 
God, as a thing taking visible shape under human 
conditions — abides, indestructible. Only it is trans- 
ferred from one set of "occupiers" to another. To 
the Jews succeed the Christians as the chosen people 
of God, and these Christians are "a nation." How- 
ever much recruited out of " every nation," however 
representative of "all tribes and peoples and tongues," 
they are in our Lord's view of them sufficiently 
distinct and sufficiently homogeneous to be called 
a nation. It is necessary to remember this in an 
age when there seems to be so little to hold Christen- 
dom together, and when the Kingdom of Heaven 
might be judged to have no definite boundaries and 
no recognizable feature common to all its members. 
Over against the Jews, with their so sharply defined 
and jealously limited nationality, the Christians are 
also "a nation." That is only one aspect of the 
Kingdom out of many. But it must not be ignored. 
The Church exists for the purpose of yielding the 
fruits of righteousness : it is a Society of holy living ; 
but it is not the less a Society, a Church, a Nation. 



XII. 
THE PARABLE OF THE KING'S SUPPER 

THE PARABLE OF THE WEDDING AND OF 
THE WEDDING GUEST 

St. Matthew xxii. 2-1 4. 

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a 
marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were 
bidden to the wedding : and they would not come. Again, he sent 
forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I 
have prepared my dinner : my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all 
things are ready : come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, 
and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise : and 
the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew 
them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth : and he sent 
forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their 
city. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they 
which were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the high- 
ways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. So those 
servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many 
as they found, both bad and good : and the wedding was furnished 
with guests. 

And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man 
which had not on a wedding garment : and he saith unto him, Friend, 
how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding garment ? And he 
was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand 
and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness ; there 
shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few 
are chosen. 

THIS parable may fairly be said to be the 
gloomiest ever spoken by our Lord. It is 
almost savage in its twofold severity. Spoken to 
Jews, and dealing primarily with their apostacy 

137 



138 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

(which is represented as total and irremediable), it 
goes on to crush by an awful example the least 
tendency to exultation on the part of Christians. 
Following closely upon the last, and dealing with 
the Kingdom from the same general point of view 
(as first rejected by the Jews and then bestowed 
upon the Christians), it is nevertheless very much 
more disquieting as regards the latter. It may be 
supposed that our Lord either perceived or foresaw 
among His followers a certain tendency to rest 
content with the outward calling and character of a 
Christian, as though that were in itself sufficient 
safeguard against the wrath to come. So He 
seems to have repeated with some variety of detail 
a parable which He had made use of at least 
once before (St. Luke xiv.), and to have added 
to it that incident of the wedding guest which 
forms by far the most remarkable feature of the 
story as it stands here. That this incident formed 
no part of the original parable is evident from its 
incongruity. It introduces considerations of an 
entirely different character, and emphasizes an 
aspect of the Kingdom which is remote from the 
one with which the parable as a whole is concerned. 
It reminds us of that part of the story of Dives and 
Lazarus about the brethren of Dives, which it is so 
impossible to bring into any connection with the 
rest. That also may be looked upon as an addition 
to the story as originally told, an addition which our 
Lord made in order to meet some pressing need, 
although it undoubtedly impaired the dramatic 
power of that amazing narrative. 



THE KING'S SUPPER 139 

In the present case our Lord was evidently- 
concerned to draw His picture of the Kingdom in 
the darkest possible colours. It may be that in 
that hour His soul also "was filled with the scornful 
reproof of the wealthy, and with the despitefulness 
of the proud." l On the one hand the Jews weighed 
upon His mind, and on the other Judas, until His 
soul was "exceeding sorrowful even unto death." 
So He deliberately darkened the already dark 
colours in which He had painted the rejection of 
His invitations by the Jews, and their subsequent 
fate. Them He made to be murderers, as well as 
scorners, and their destiny to be destruction as well 
as exclusion. He spoke not obscurely of the cruel 
persecution which they would raise against His 
disciples, and of the vengeance which would fall 
upon their nation and city. Having done this, and 
having intimated that the places which they left 
empty would all the same be filled, He then turned 
upon these other guests thus graciously invited and 
admitted, and bade them see what they might expect 
if they presumed upon His goodness. Certainly 
our Lord never used in His teaching any piece of 
imagery more frightful than this of the man without 
a wedding garment The horribleness of it might 
really be considered gratuitous if it were not His. 
The wretched man had not asked to come to that 
feast. He had been gathered in with a miscellaneous 
crowd (" both bad and good ") by the king's servants. 
He had to come in as he was, presumably. The 
king's orders left no room for enquiry as to whether 

1 Psalm cxxiii. 4, P.B. Version. 



140 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

he possessed a wedding garment or no. The action 
of the king indeed in this matter is, on the face 
of it, arbitrary and passionate. There may have 
been a great number of these ill-assorted guests in 
the like predicament. But this one happens to 
catch his eye, and to offend his mind, and so he 
orders him to be cruelly punished. Now of course 
it is true here, as elsewhere, that our Lord takes 
no pains to draw men better than they really are. 
Kings — in popular imagination at any rate — are 
not troubled with any scruples. They have their 
generous impulses, and like to fill their palaces with 
guests. But if they are insulted or aggrieved their 
vengeance knows no pity, and their anger no 
moderation. So it is here. The "certain king" 
does not represent the Father of Heaven except 
for the particular purpose of the parable ; nor does 
the parable itself represent more than one particular 
aspect (presumably a very limited one) of the 
Kingdom. 

But making the fullest allowance for this, the 
alternative suggested, and meant to be suggested, 
by the parable is really frightful. Either you are 
to be excluded from the Kingdom altogether, or 
you become liable to an investigation which you 
cannot stand, and a punishment which you dare 
not contemplate. If you refuse to enter you will 
be destroyed; if you venture to enter you run the 
chance of being cast out into outer darkness. Nor 
is this suggestion really mitigated by the commonly- 
received explanation that every guest so invited 
received the offer of a suitable garment as he went 



THE KING'S SUPPER 141 

in. That may have been the case at royal enter- 
tainments of such a character; but it looks much 
more like one of those ingenious devices for turning 
the edge of a hard saying (like the " needle's-eye " 
gate at Hebron), 1 which we have learnt to regard 
with so much suspicion. At any rate, although it 
may be lawful to introduce this explanation for 
certain purposes of teaching, it is clear that we have 
no right to read it into the parable. If our Lord's 
point had really been that the unhappy man was 
without a wedding garment because he had refused 
to put one on, He would have said so. This 
habit of reading things into parables because they 
have to be made to square with our own precon- 
ceived view of their meaning is utterly indefensible. 
The fact is simply that the affair as our Lord 
related it has no moral character. It is the act of 
an irresponsible tyrant which may, or may not, 
be justified by something which he knows about 
the object of his wrath. But whether he is thus 
justified is not in question at all. It does not fall 
to be considered. The only matter which concerns 
us is that the man was thus treated because he did 
not have on a wedding garment. There is a danger, 
a very real and pressing danger, corresponding to 
this in the Kingdom of Heaven — a danger which 
arises out of the peculiar conditions which govern 
admission into that Kingdom. For beyond doubt 
(as we have certainly gathered from other parables) 
the conditions of admission have but little connection 
with moral fitness. The sweep of the net includes 
1 See Mr. Wright's Some New Testament Problems, pp. 125 ff. 



142 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

those "of every kind," and it is only at the end 
that the bad are cast away. So here "the servants 
gathered together all as many as they found, both 
bad and good." The membership of the Church 
has always been more or less indiscriminate. No 
human wisdom or effort will make it otherwise. No 
doubt the message appeals most to the best, but 
it is impossible to prevent its being attractive to 
many who are deceived and some who are deceivers. 
Simon Magus also was baptized — and it has not 
been suggested that Philip was unduly lax or 
culpably careless. There is no missionary, at all 
successful, who does not admit "converts" who are 
morally unsound and spiritually unfit. And when 
it comes to the children of converts (whether infant 
or adult) then the sweep of the net becomes 
practically undistinguishing. The majority, who 
have but little religion or irreligion of their own, 
will always want to follow the religion of their 
fathers, and will always persuade themselves that 
they too believe it. It cannot be helped, and 
moreover it is the Lord's will. But then it involves 
a frightful danger. The moral side of the Kingdom 
cannot be set aside because admission to the 
Kingdom is free, and in a certain sense indis- 
criminate. How it is to be worked out no man 
really knows, because all that is told us is by way 
of illustrating principles, not by way of describing 
events. 

But the danger to the individual is of the 
most pressing and terrible character, and therefore 
our Lord seeks to bring it home by this frightful 



THE KING'S SUPPER 143 

example. "You are Christians," He says in effect, 
"and the Kingdom of Heaven is yours now. It has 
been taken from the Jews and given to you. The 
places reserved for them of old at the Marriage 
Supper of the Lamb have been thrown open to 
you, and you have filled them. Blessed are they 
which are bidden to that Supper. Blessed indeed, 
if they be found worthy, so that they may walk with 
Him in white, and sit down with Him at His table. 
But cursed are they, and all the more cursed, if they 
are found unworthy ; it were better for them not 
to have known the way of righteousness. Therefore 
be not high-minded, but fear." That is what He 
says in this parable ; and the very gloom of it, 
the sense of darkness and despondency which 
clings to it, makes the warning all the more 
emphatic. 

When we consider in how many lands and under 
how many circumstances Christian people rejoice 
in their Christianity, and yet show no appreciable 
conformity to Christ, we perceive that the gloom 
of the parable is not inexplicable nor its harshness 
out of keeping. If any man enquire concerning the 
garment, by what standard of beauty or expensive- 
ness it shall be judged whether it can be passed 
as a wedding garment or no, he shall get no 
information here. Only it would seem, that theory 
is false which is widely held, that every Christian 
will be " saved " who does not apostatize but clings 
to his Christian profession to the end and accepts 
the outward rites belonging to it. That is to say 
every guest who has been let in, and who does 



144 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

not vacate his place, will be suffered to remain. 
The parable does not square with any such teaching. 
Its terrors are (it may be) vague, but they are 
hopelessly inconsistent with that kind of religious 
optimism. 



XIII. 

THE THREE PARABLES OF ST. 
MATTHEW XXV. 

IT may be assumed that this wonderful group of 
parables, which has exercised such an extra- 
ordinary influence over the minds of Christians in 
all generations, has a unity of its own — a subordinate 
unity indeed, since for certain purposes these parables 
may easily be co-ordinated with others — but still a 
unity which is sufficiently striking. They have in 
common a sense of being dominated by the Presence 
of our Lord Himself, and again, of being closely con- 
nected with His second coming, which are nothing 
like so clearly marked elsewhere. No one doubts 
that the Bridegroom of the first, and the Lord of the 
second, is as much our Saviour as the King of the 
third parable ; and it is our Saviour in the Regenera- 
tion when He shall have come " in His Kingdom," as 
the dying robber expressed it. They are not indeed 
parables of the Second Advent in the sense in which 
they have been popularly understood, but on the face 
of them they are clearly enough bound up with what 
our Lord taught towards the end of His ministry 
about His coming again. It will be necessary, there- 
fore, in order to understand them aright, to investigate 
L i45 



146 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

at some little length what that teaching really came 
to. To examine this subject thoroughly it would be 
necessary to follow out in its slow development the 
doctrine of the Old Testament concerning the Future. 
The more we did so the more clearly it would appear 
that there is a real continuity between that doctrine 
and our Lord's, which is of the utmost importance 
for the interpretation of the latter. We must be 
content here to indicate the lines of agreement very 
briefly. It is, of course, known to all thoughtful 
readers that there is no trace of a future life in the 
Law of Moses. Revealed religion was absolutely con- 
centrated upon the present life, upon the worship and 
service of God, upon the enjoyment of God's favour 
and presence, here and now. The problems of the 
future, of what lies beyond the grave, were left 
severely alone. It is certain that men must have 
speculated, more or less eagerly, about these problems 
in Israel, as they did in Egypt; but these speculations, 
though not prohibited, received no encouragement. 
No light reached them but that which was reflected 
from the revealed goodness and faithfulness of God 
now and here. Gradually, very gradually, men came 
to feel with a certain assurance that God could not 
cease to be their God, could not become less their 
God, because they died. It is precisely this feeling, 
and nothing else, which gave force and life to our 
Lord's argument from the words, " I am the God of 
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob/' 1 As an argument from words it is nought. 
As an argument from the character of God it is 

1 Mark xii, 26, 



THE SECOND COMING 147 

everything. Since He is still willing to be known as 
the God of Abraham, it is certain He cannot have 
allowed His "friend" to lapse into nothingness. 
Abraham must still live, and must some day be 
restored to the perfectness of human life in body 
as well as soul. Long before our Lord's day this 
conviction had so far prevailed that in the Book of 
Job, and in a few of the Psalms, and in one or two 
places of the Prophets, we find anticipations and 
assurances, few and brief and for the most part 
vague, of immortal life and the resurrection of the 
body. In Daniel xii. 2 we find for the first time the 
thought of retribution distinctly connected with the 
resurrection. If God's goodness must recall His 
friends to joy and blessedness, His justice must 
also recall His enemies to suffer the due reward of 
their deeds. These convictions rapidly spread and 
expanded in the age when our Lord came, and a 
large apocalyptic literature sprang up (which passed 
over into Christian circles) describing in a crude and 
materialistic way the events of the last day, the 
rewards of the saved and the torments of the lost. 
In His own teaching our Lord distinctly adopted 
and enforced the Old Testament standpoint that the 
true centre of Life is here and now. It is of the first 
importance to realize that our Lord's doctrine was 
essentially that of the Prophets and Psalmists of 
Israel in this matter, in spite of all apparent differ- 
ences. Life eternal is a present possession which He 
came at once to reveal and to impart. It may be said 
with equal truth to stand in the knowledge of God and 
of Christ, or in active obedience, or in an inner fellow- 



148 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

ship; but anyhow, Life eternal must be had here and 
now in order to be had at all. Against this Life what 
we call death (what our Saviour would only allow to 
be sleep) has no power. This powerlessness He used 
to express in such paradoxical sayings as " He that 
believeth in Me shall live though he die; and he that 
liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." 1 He ob- 
literates death, as it were, for His own, and while He 
does not of course mean to deny the mere physical 
fact, He treats it as a negligible quantity, as a thing 
which from His point of view may be ignored, since it 
has no fundamental significance. At bottom therefore 
our Lord's attitude towards death is the very same 
as that of the Psalmist and Prophet, in spite of the 
superficial difference which is so striking. Both 
ignored death in speaking of the essential relation- 
ship of the soul to God. The Psalmist ignored it, 
because he knew nothing of what it meant, and had 
only a vague and desperate hope which he hardly 
dared to express, that it would not separate him 
from God. Our Lord ignored it because He knew 
it would make no real difference. In either case 
the life in God now and here is the one important 
thing. And this is without doubt the most distinct- 
ively Christian attitude towards death and that which 
comes after. "Do not trouble about these things," 
our Lord says in effect, " do not mind. Concentrate 
yourself upon to-day. Live for God, live in God, 
to-day. Enjoy to the full that fellowship which 
He offers you to-day. Never mind to-morrow : that 
will be all right. Never mind the eternal morrow : 

1 John" xi. 25, 26. 



THE SECOND COMING 149 

that will be all right too, for God will take care of 
it." No one can well deny that such is the general 
effect of our Lord's teaching about Life eternal. It 
is a teaching which makes everything turn upon the 
present, and wholly discourages that rather futile 
" futuristic " temper which has been so characteristic 
of popular Christianity. Probably the tone of mind 
which is reflected in the lines "There is a happy land, 
far, far away," and in so many hymns sung by older 
people, has done more to enfeeble and sterilize the 
Christianity of the masses than anything else. The 
centre of gravity is shifted from the present (where 
it ought always to be) into the more or less dreamy 
and visionary future, where it ought emphatically not 
to be. It is not only " hell " that has been preached 
to the miserable lowering of the whole tone of re- 
ligion among Christians : it is quite as much Heaven. 
We have, for the most part, fallen far below the 
spiritual level of the Hebrew Psalmist, who for the 
love he had towards God and for the joy he felt in 
His favour and fellowship was content not to think 
what would happen when inevitable death came his 
way. We, alas, are almost content to live without 
God to-day, because we expect to enjoy Him on 
some distant shore " far, far away." 

But while our Lord laid the greatest stress upon 
the fact that Eternal Life is here and now, and is 
merely continued without interruption past the bars 
of death, it is yet certain that He did teach a doctrine 
of things to come. He taught it mainly, as would 
appear, to His chosen disciples, but that makes little 
difference. We have to take it into account, at any 



150 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

rate in certain broad aspects of it. If it be impos- 
sible to give any really satisfactory explanation of it, 
we shall at least be able to see where popular notions 
about it are untenable. 

Now the first thing that must inevitably strike us 
is that our Lord's doctrine of things to come is 
wholly connected with His own Coming. The ideas 
which are so familiar to us from the three parables 
of St. Matthew xxv. are expressed in a less dramatic 
form in almost all other places where He speaks of 
the end of the world. But this Coming of His, round 
which all the crucial events of the future revolve, 
He uniformly represents as being close at hand : 
practically, within the lifetime of those then present. 
" Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not 
pass away, till all these things be accomplished. 
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words 
shall not pass away." 1 It is possible no doubt to 
explain the word "generation" in a figurative sense 
so as to include all Christians, as members of one 
family. But no one who heard Him could possibly 
have understood Him so, and that seems sufficient 
answer. It is true also that He went on to declare 
His own ignorance of the " day" or the "hour," i.e. of 
the precise date. But here again those who listened 
to Him must inevitably have understood that while 
the precise date was not revealed even to Him, yet 
the approximate date (within the next forty years, 
let us say) was known to Him. Nor can any of the 
commonly-urged explanations touch that other say- 
ing, " Verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone 

1 Matt. xxiv. 34. 



THE SECOND COMING 151 

through the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be 
come." 1 Even if sufficient ingenuity could succeed 
in neutralizing the effect of these and other sayings 
taken separately, yet the combined effect of all of 
them together would remain overwhelming. There 
is no real question that the only natural way, and 
therefore the only reverent way, of understanding 
them is the way in which they actually were under- 
stood. Our Lord's teaching about His second 
Coming as received by St. Paul, and as reproduced 
by him at Thessalonica in the earlier years of his 
ministry, had an unmistakable effect. The Thes- 
salonians were so persuaded that the Lord was to 
come quickly, even in their lifetime, that when some 
of their number died they were greatly disturbed 
about them, as though they had lost their share in 
the glories of that glorious day. St. Paul had to 
explain to them that the dead in Christ would not 
be any worse off than "we that are alive, that are 
left unto the coming of the Lord." 2 No doubt, as 
years went on, the keenness of the expectation some- 
what diminished, and practical exigencies led the 
Apostles to dwell rather upon other topics. Yet 
such expressions as those of St. James, "the Judge 
standeth before the doors," 3 "The coming of the 
Lord is at hand," 4 and those of St. Peter, " The end 
of all things is at hand," 5 " Looking for and earnestly 
desiring the coming of the day of God," 6 abundantly 
testify to the apostolic belief that their Master would 

1 Matt. x. 23. 2 1 Thess. iv. 15. 

3 James v. 9. 4 Ibid. 8. 

5 i Peter iv. 7. 6 2 Peter iii. 12. 



152 



THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 



come again very shortly indeed. It is not necessary 
to give any explanation of this fact. Whether we 
like it or not it is a fact, and a fact of primary 
importance in considering our Lord's teaching about 
the last things. The Apostles did not use such 
language about the Lord's coming because it was 
the conventional language of the Church (as perhaps 
we do), but because they understood Him in that 
sense. And they only did what we ourselves should 
have done. He so worded His prophetic utterances 
about the eternal future, He threw His parables of 
the last things into such a shape, and gave them 
such a colouring, that men inevitably expected Him 
to return and to bring " eternity " with Him in their 
own lifetime. In His prophecies and parables death 
was left out : there was no room for death, no time 
to die, except as an exceptional thing for which 
special provision would be made. In point of fact 
when Christian people began to die in any numbers 
(as at Thessalonica) Christian teaching about the 
future had to be modified, reconsidered, supple- 
mented (however we like to phrase it), in order to 
meet a state of things which had not been contem- 
plated. As in the spiritual teaching of St. John's 
Gospel, so also in the eschatology of the Synoptists 
(but after an entirely independent fashion), death is 
ignored or treated as a "negligible quantity." That 
is a note of unity underlying difference which is 
worth remembering. 

The effect then of our Lord's teaching about His 
own Return was to bring the Eternal Future into the 
very closest relation to the present. Life and death, 



THE SECOND COMING 153 

Heaven and hell, are not relegated (as in popular 
religious teaching) to a misty and far off future : 
they spring immediately and directly out of to-day, 
with no great gulf between. To-day you have to 
see that you have oil in your lamps ; to-day you 
have to turn the Master's talents to best account ; 
to-day you have to relieve the Master's wants and 
woes in the persons of His brothers and sisters ; 
because to-morrow He will be here, and give you 
your portion accordingly. It is indeed hardly a 
doctrine of the future at all, because that future is 
so close and so direct. The Judge is at the door ; 
His finger is on the latch ; the next word you speak, 
the next thing you do, may be the last before the 
"Eternal Future" has begun for you. That is the 
effect of our Lord's teaching, and it must have been 
intentional. 

Now how is this affected by the obvious fact that 
our Lord has not yet come again? There cannot 
possibly be a question more important or more 
urgently needing some sort of answer. On the 
face of it (we need not hesitate to say) our Lord's 
anticipations of speedy return have been falsified 
by the event. What must we conclude from that 
fact? Common sense must at any rate draw one 
conclusion ; and would invariably do so if it were 
not stifled oftentimes by a wholly irreligious dread 
of looking facts in the face. The only natural and 
obvious time indication in the New Testament pro- 
phecies of the Second Advent has turned out to be 
entirely delusive. There is really no question as to 
that. What follows ? Why, for anyone that has not 



154 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

abjured his common sense in these matters, it follows 
without a shadow of a doubt that all speculations 
about the future based upon prophecies or parables 
of the New Testament are not worth the paper they 
are written upon. Scripture itself lets us know, in 
the most striking fashion, that the most ancient 
and obvious of all calculations about the Coming 
of Christ, although made by Apostles and made 
from the Master's own words, turned out to be a 
mistake (chronologically speaking). It is absolutely 
impossible that any other calculation of times and 
seasons can have one-hundredth part as much to say 
for itself as that which prevailed among the earliest 
Christians — and was utterly wrong. To ask any man 
to whom God has been pleased to continue the light 
of reason to consider the grounds of these calcula- 
tions is an affront. It is an affront to one's piety as 
well as to one's common sense. It has pleased God 
that the only natural and obvious interpretation of 
our Lord's own words about His Return should be 
falsified by the event. Whatever else that was meant 
to teach us, it was certainly meant to make us not 
merely sceptical of, but absolutely indifferent to, any 
other speculation whatever which attempts to lay 
down any time limits for that Return. Anyone who 
pays heed to such speculations is simply besotted, 
and can only be treated as one whom God has given 
over to a spirit of delusion, because he has rejected 
the plain teaching of His Holy Word. 

This lesson, however, is only a negative one, and 
therefore can only hold a secondary place in the 
Divine purpose. The other and greater truth remains. 



THE SECOND COMLNG 155 

Our Lord spoke constantly of His Second Coming 
so as to make us feel that the Kingdom of Heaven is 
continuous, is both immanent and imminent ; that 
the present and the future run into one another 
without a break, that death is of little or no account, 
that life is made up of " to-days," and that on each 
"to-day" hang all the issues of eternity. It is clear 
enough that the simplest and directest way to create 
this kind of spiritual atmosphere was to speak as if 
His return was to be immediate — within the lifetime 
of those who heard Him. That He did so speak is 
certain, unless we are to discard the Gospel records 
wholesale, confirmed as these are by the evident belief 
of the first disciples. How He could so speak, when 
He was not to fulfil that expectation in fact, is a 
difficulty which we cannot possibly avoid. We may 
think that it can be explained in perfect conformity 
with the conditions under which the Incarnate Son of 
God was manifested for our salvation. Or we may 
have to confess that for us the difficulty is insoluble 
at present. But at any rate He did so speak, and at 
any rate we can see that it was the best thing possible 
for the Kingdom of God, not for the time being merely, 
but for all time. The apparent failure of the pre- 
diction made, has brought into stronger relief the 
spiritual truth inculcated. It does not matter now, 
not the very least, whether the Second Advent be 
delayed a million million years. That is indeed very 
possible, since there are really no reasons whatever 
for supposing it nearer — no reasons at all which did 
not already exist (in greater force perhaps) many 
many centuries ago. It does not make any difference, 



156 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

because mere lapse of time is clearly not a factor at 
all in matters of eternal concern. For all Christians 
it remains for ever true, above all things true, that we 
have to live in God and for God to-day^ exactly as if 
to-day were destined to run on without a break into 
the eternal future. The great thing is that nothing 
really intervenes between us and His Coming. Death 
does not, for death makes no difference. Time does 
not, for time cannot alter anything in our relations 
to Him. The principle of religion which underlies 
all our Lord's references to His Second Coming is just 
this, that His Return is the next thing for all of us at 
all times. Straight out of to-day we are to look 
across the unknown gulfs of time into the glory and 
the terror of that Day. That is the Christian temper, 
by which all that is serious, and strenuous, and arduous, 
in the Christian life is regulated and sustained. Shall 
we be surprised if we discover that, in His prophecies 
as well as in His parables, our Lord did not so much 
intimate an occurrence as inculcate a temper? It is 
certain that this was very largely the case with the 
Prophets of old. 

The same great principle must explain our Lord's 
absolute reticence about the intermediate state — the 
state of the departed between death and judgment. 
As He ignored death so He ignored what comes 
after death. For Him (and mostly for His apostles) 
death is out of sight. There is not any time allowed 
in the Kingdom of Heaven for people to die. What 
lies before the disciple is the Second Coming of the 
Lord, and the searching glance of His eye, and the 
praise or blame which fall from His lips. Blessed is 



THE SECOND COMING 157 

that servant whom the Lord when He cometh shall 
find watching. That is the key-note. Of course 
some do die. Some saints " slept " even when Christ 
was upon earth. Yet it may be thought that these 
were raised either by our Lord during His ministry, 
or at His resurrection. Anyhow theirs is not the 
normal case (if we may say so) and is almost dis- 
regarded. St. Paul had to supply the Thessalonians 
with special information about them — information, be 
it noted, which concerned itself exclusively with what 
would happen when Christ came. There is an almost 
unbroken silence in the New Testament about the 
state of the departed between death and judgment — 
a silence which has afforded large scope, but very 
little countenance, to a multitude of speculations. 
Nothing throws the silence of Scripture into stronger 
relief than the desperate shifts to which men are 
reduced in order to find something to assert about 
the intermediate state. Our Lord told a story — a 
most vividly dramatic story — about the rich man and 
Lazarus, and how they fared before and after their 
decease. The story is designedly clothed in the 
crudely materialistic language current among the 
Jews, because it is directed against Jewish covetous- 
ness and Jewish superstition. God is not referred to 
in the story. Father Abraham is the "divinity" of 
the piece. No Christian can by any possibility accept 
the theology which is implied in it — because it is 
simply the theology of a debased Judaism which 
looked no higher than to " Father Abraham " for 
hope of good things in the life to come. It is in the 
highest degree irrational and irreverent to reject (as 



158 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

all Christians do) the materialistic details of the story, 
and yet to draw deductions — as that people will 
recognize one another in the intermediate state — 
from the very details rejected. We can learn 
nothing, because we were intended to learn nothing, 
from the story save what our Lord designed to 
teach ; the utter hollowness of those words " rich " 
and " poor " as commonly used ; and the utter use- 
lessness of Father Abraham or any other such friend 
and patron to alter our fate in the world to come. 
Others again have sought to found a doctrine of 
purgatory upon St. Paul's language in I Corinthians 
iii. It is absolutely clear that when St. Paul speaks 
of " the day " testing every man's work " because 
it is revealed in fire," he is talking (as usual) about 
our Lord's Coming, and how He will show everybody 
and everything up exactly as they really are — a pro- 
cess in which a multitude of unfounded reputations 
and an enormous mass of misdirected and self-ended 
activities will perish like leaves and stubble in the 
flame. 

There is in fact no doctrine of the intermediate 
state in the New Testament. There is simply the 
assurance that the servants of Christ will be "with 
Christ " in some very happy sense ; but where, or 
how, or under what conditions we know not at all. 
There is also the general conviction that He who 
hath begun a good work in us will go on with it after 
death as well as before. Beyond this there is nothing 
but speculation. Reason, when it has to consider the 
actual state of those that die, demands that there 
shall be some provision made for their purification. 



THE SECOND COMING 159 

Piety itself can hardly help believing that the easy- 
going Christian, who has wasted most of his life and 
never realized his responsibilities, will not see the 
Lord without also seeing himself and suffering an 
unspeakable agony of shame and sorrow. But the 
doctrine of Purgatory, albeit that it seems to find as 
much favour to-day with Nonconformists as with 
Romanists, is a speculation founded entirely on 
certain conclusions of reason and piety. It may, 
or may not, be true ; but it has not a word of 
Scripture to base itself upon. Our Lord has no 
doctrine of the intermediate life, because it is His 
practice ever to ignore death, and what lies beyond, 
and to direct our gaze right across and above the 
gulfs of time upon the distant hills which stand out 
so clear and sharp in the light of His Second Coming. 
Thirty years ago a certain doctrine of the inter- 
mediate state was taught with much confidence in 
Anglican circles. To-day it is scorned and flouted 
by not a few who are counted as authorities, and 
another doctrine quite different is taught instead. 
It is not to be wondered at : the one is as wanting 
in any real authority as the other. No books which 
deal with the state of the departed are of the slightest 
value, from whatever quarter they come. That those 
who die in the Lord are blessed we all know ; l and 
there is nothing else that we can know. 

What we come to then is this. There is in the 

New Testament a doctrine of future things which 

seems in some ways to be curiously imperfect, in 

other ways has the appearance of being very definite 

1 Rev, xiv. 13, 



160 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

and precise. It has commonly been taught to 
Christians as very definite and precise in these latter 
ways. But the moment we begin to examine this 
doctrine with any intelligence the definiteness, the 
preciseness, disappear. They are in fact only on the 
surface ; they only exist in the ft form," the form of 
words and language, which our Saviour was pleased 
to adopt in speaking about the future. He employed 
in part parable, in part prophecy, although the two 
are not very clearly distinguished ; inasmuch as the 
prophecy sometimes slides insensibly into parable. 
To the parables we shall return presently. It is 
necessary to point out here concerning the prophecies 
that they are moulded on those of the Old Testa- 
ment, and have essentially the same character — as 
we might have expected. Take any Old Testament 
prophecy of the last things, such, e.g., as that in 
Micah v. It is a very splendid piece of writing : 
it is exceedingly effective, highly rhetorical, and 
withal truly poetic. It conveys a very strong impres- 
ison ; an impression which is in one way extremely 
definite. God is to be glorified and exalted : God's 
people are to be delivered and exalted too : wicked- 
ness is to perish for evermore : righteousness and 
peace and joy are to have full accomplishment and 
sway. All that is exceedingly definite — as definite 
as it is satisfactory. If the mind is delighted with 
the mingled beauty and dignity and quaintness of 
the language, the soul is equally delighted with the 
splendour of the hope, of the promise, conveyed. 

But in another way there is nothing definite 
about the prophecy at all. Examine the passage ; 



THE SECOND COMING 161 

examine it in connection with its context — just 
where it lies in the page of Scripture. Almost 
invariably you find that this magnificent prophecy 
is closely connected with some political occurrence, 
some temporal deliverance, which was to occur (and 
did occur) in the then immediate future. Let us 
say that it is — as indeed it very often is — the 
return from Babylon. Well, you cannot with any 
sort of satisfaction cut the passage up, and say, 
" This verse speaks of the return to Judaea, and that 
verse of the days of the Messiah, or of the times of 
refreshing which are to come from the presence of the 
Lord." Both elements are there, but so inextricably 
mixed that they cannot be disentangled. It belonged 
to the " prophetic perspective " of these great writers 
that they foresaw the glories of the Messiah and 
of His Kingdom in close relation to, in close 
connection with, some approaching deliverance or 
triumph of Israel ; and they prophesied accordingly, 
apparently quite unaware of the immense tract 
of time which was to intervene. That was the 
method of the Holy Ghost "who spake by the 
Prophets." If we were petulant enough to insist that 
there was error and deception in it, unworthy of the 
Spirit of God, we should only advertise our own 
ignorance and presumption. It is no doubt a far 
more beautiful and useful method than we should 
ever have thought out. But it has of course this 
"disadvantage" (as men have been ever tempted 
to consider it) that it makes the interpretation of 
prophecy impossible, as far as time and place and 
outward circumstance are concerned. All the ap- 

M 



162 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

pearance of definiteness which many of these 
prophecies possess is appearance only ; it belongs 
to their form, not their substance. Only history, 
only experience, could unravel the twisted threads 
and make known how much in the prophecy 
belonged to the immediate future, and how much 
to the final future — the Kingdom of Heaven. Now 
it is precisely the same with prophecies of the end 
as spoken by our Lord. The Holy Ghost has not, 
in fact, changed His method. In the great eschato- 
logical discourse of St. Matthew xxiv., e.g. y our Lord 
speaks at once of the destruction of Jerusalem and 
the end of the world, and connects the two events 
(thus intimately conjoined) with His own coming to 
judgment. The acutest commentators have given up 
the attempt to disentangle the double reference 
which runs right through the prophecy. It cannot 
in fact be done except after a fashion which is 
quite arbitrary, and therefore quite irreverent. It 
may be noted in passing that while "destructive" 
criticism is often sadly irreverent, there is a criticism 
which calls itself "conservative" or "orthodox," 
which surpasses all other for sheer irreverence : for 
it does not stick at treating our Lord's words with 
the most outrageous violence in order to force them 
into conformity with some traditional opinion as to 
what He " must " have meant. It is reverence as 
well as truth to say that our Lord was apparently 
unaware of the enormous tract of time which was 
to separate the fall of Jerusalem from the end of the 
world. Whether He was really unaware, or not, we 
need not here enquire. Without doubt He spake 



THE SECOND COMING 163 

as if He were : He gave no hint that the two events 
would lie absolutely apart in time and circumstance. 
The Holy Ghost spake by Him concerning the im- 
mediate and the final future exactly as He had 
spoken by the prophets of old. Whatever indirect 
effect (if any) this fact may have upon our ways 
of thinking and of speaking about the mystery 
of the Incarnation, we ought to recognize the fact. 
The prophecies of our Lord create a tremendously 
deep and definite impression — an impression which 
is, of course, profoundly true ; but they do not lend 
themselves in the Very least to the purpose of those 
people who want to lay them out in chart and 
diagram, in time and place and detail. Those 
people found themselves mistaken at the very first, 
in the most crucial point of all. He did not come 
when He seemed to say that He would. It is surely 
a sufficiently certain inference from this undoubted 
fact that whenever people try to turn our Lord's 
prophecies into definite predictions (definite, i.e., as 
to time or place or detail) they will be equally 
mistaken. The attempt is founded upon an erroneous 
conception of the nature of prophecy to which we 
surely ought to have had our eyes opened by this 
time. The actually and definitely predictive element 
in these prophecies is after all exceedingly small. 
It is limited to the one fact (of inexhaustible import) 
that our Lord will come again and bring with Him 
the fulness of the Kingdom. All the rest is simply 
the setting of this one fact — a setting which has 
no other object than to throw it up in the most vivid 
and emphatic relief. If anyone thinks such an 



i6 4 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

estimate derogatory, it must be because he has not 
studied the Old Testament — because he declines to 
" hear Moses and the prophets." The one and only 
lesson of heavenly wisdom which the Church has 
ever learnt from these prophecies of our Lord's is 
this, that His Return is for all religious purposes 
the next thing — the one thing upon which every 
faithful servant of His has to keep his eyes steadily 
fixed. For the true servant of Christ there is not 
any earthly to-morrow : each day runs right on 
without a break into the Day which shall try 
all its work and crown all its patience in the 
Presence of the Master Himself. The Saviour of the 
world stands as it were upon the mountain ridge 
whence He ascended into Heaven. We have gone 
in the freshness and fervour of our faith to see 
Him off, to bid Him good-bye for "the little while" 
of which He spake. It is early dawn, and the 
mists lie thick and white upon the levels and 
the lower slopes. Away to the east there is another 
mountain ridge of uncertain height and distance. 
The growing intensity of light behind it, and the 
marvellous transparency of the air, make it seem 
very distinct and vastly nearer than it is. The 
highest crest has caught the sunshine, and takes 
on a sudden splendour. The Saviour points to it. 
" Behold," He says, " My Second Coming : it is there 
already, it looks you in the face, it is at hand : 
remember the words that I spake unto you." And 
so He has blessed us, and He is gone : and we set 
our faces to the east, and our eyes are on the shining 
ridge which looks so near just now : and down below 



THE SECOND COMING 165 

the mists lie close and quiet over the endless plains 
and dreary deserts and tangled forests and stony 
ridges which lie between. By-and-by the mists will 
rise, and as we go down into these interminable 
distances we shall take note that the Saviour said 
nothing about them, almost made as if they did not 
exist. But we know that He spake true when He 
ignored everything else, and pointed right away and 
across to His Second Coming, because He has the 
words of eternal life — and eternal life knows not 
death, and does not care for lapse of time. 

It may perhaps be urged that such a statement 
of the case takes no account of the revelation given 
to St. John in Patmos. But the truth is that the 
strange light — a light from Heaven itself — which 
shines in the Apocalypse, shines upon the upper 
surface only of the mists which lie so still and close 
upon the course of history between our Lord's going 
and His Return. The light never gets beneath the 
mists, it only plays upon their upper surface with 
effects which are sometimes bright and beautiful, 
sometimes weird and terrible. These effects of 
heavenly light upon the earth-born mists have 
wonderful lessons in the heart of them. But they 
do not teach us any earthly history, or anything 
resembling it. That is not God's purpose. 



XIV. 
THE PARABLE OF THE TEN VIRGINS 

St. Matthew xxv. 1-12. 
Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which 
took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. And five 
of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took 
their lamps, and took no oil with them : but the wise took oil in their 
vessels with their lamps. While the bridegroom tarried, they all 
slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, 
the bridegroom cometh ; go ye out to meet him. Then all those 
virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the 
wise, Give us of your oil ; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise 
answered, saying, Not so ; lest there be not enough for us and you : 
but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while 
they went to buy, the bridegroom came ; and they that were ready 
went in with him to the marriage ; and the door was shut. Afterward 
came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. But he 
answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I. know you not. 

THIS parable is by universal admission wonderful 
and effective to the last degree. It is very- 
picturesque, and lends itself to any amount of word 
painting and picture painting. It is thoroughly 
dramatic, full of action, and of passion too. How 
many thousands have been moved to tears by the 
late Poet Laureate's lines, subdued and restrained 
as they are ! " The door was shut." There is a 
stern, hard hopelessness about the words which is 
ineffably sad, and when we apply them to eternal 
things we absolutely shudder at what they seem 

166 



THE TEN VIRGINS 167 

to say so clearly. But then it is not clear that we 
have any right to apply them to eternal things, at 
least in any direct way. For the more frankly we 
consider the parable the more impossible is it to 
accept that view of it which underlies the ordinary 
" pulpit" rendering of it. According to this view, 
the parable is a thinly -veiled description of what 
will really happen to ourselves, and to other 
members of the Christian community, when Christ 
comes again. The Bridegroom is our Lord. The 
wise virgins are good Christians ; the foolish virgins 
are careless Christians. The lamps represent the 
"holy living and godliness" by which we ought to 
be distinguished; the oil that grace of the Holy 
Spirit without which this light cannot be maintained. 
The going in of the wise to the wedding feast is 
Heaven ; the shutting out of the foolish is hell. 
That is simple and, by virtue of the ease and effect 
with which it can be applied, attractive. But it is 
absolutely fatal to it that the character of the wise 
virgins, as shown by their conduct, is utterly un- 
christian. From the point of view of the Gospel 
they are distinctly worse than the others. The 
only fault charged against the foolish virgins is 
" foolishness," want of foresight, carelessness. The 
wise virgins are simply wise in their own interests ; 
they are selfish, and hard-hearted. They decline 
to part with any of their oil, for fear they should 
not have enough left for themselves ; they get rid 
of the disagreeable importunity of their sisters by 
sending them to buy oil at the shops — in the middle 
of the night! Now there is no need to blame the 



1 68 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

wise virgins — not the least. Our Lord has evidently 
no intention whatever of blaming them. They only 
behaved as the ordinary run of people would behave 
under such circumstances. They belong essentially 
to the natural, unregenerate, non - moral, world. 
They are only thinking of themselves. It does not 
occur to them, with the pleasures of the marriage 
feast in view, to be generous — much less to be 
deliberately self-sacrificing. Why should it ? They 
are not Christians, and they do not stand for 
Christians except in one specific and very limited 
aspect. They are just part of a story from common 
human life, as seen in the east — like the unrighteous 
steward, or the unjust judge. These last indeed are 
distinctly immoral, whereas the wise virgins are only 
unmoral ; but the one fact is just as fatal as the other 
to any attempt to read into the story the essential 
conditions and distinctions of Christianity. For 
Christianity is nothing if it is not moral : and 
Christian morality is nothing if it is not self-forgetful 
and self-sacrificing. The supreme law of it, as laid 
down by our Lord Himself in this very Gospel, 1 
requires of us a willingness to forfeit our own " souls " 
for the sake of love and duty. It is indeed astonish- 
ing (and disgraceful too) how the ingenuity of man 
has contrived to twist our Lord's words into some- 
thing not only different but actually opposite. By 
the simple device of translating the same Greek 
word, in the same immediate context, by two 
different English words — "life" and "soul" — and 
then persistently treating these English words as 

1 Matt. xvi. 25, 26. 



THE TEN VIRGINS 169 

having a totally distinct reference, we have contrived 
to make Him preach the Gospel, so familiar and 
so dear to many of us, of "enlightened selfishness." 
"You must be prepared," we make Him say, "to 
give up everything here, even your very life, that 
you may save your soul; it will be a bargain well 
worth making, for what can compare in value to 
your immortal soul? and what good would it be, 
if you lived in all magnificence, and lost your soul, 
and so went to hell?" 

Thousands of sermons are preached every week 
to that effect ; and those who preach them, if they 
know anything of the New Testament, know that 
it is absolutely impossible that our Lord could have 
meant anything of the sort. " Life " and " soul " 
in this passage are identical, whichever word we 
may elect to use. Nor (if we prefer " life ") is it 
life in its material aspects, but in its immaterial 
and eternal. It is the same word used in this 
Gospel when our Lord says, " Fear not them that 
kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul"; 1 
and again, "Ye shall find rest unto your souls" 2 
It would indeed be more in keeping with our present 
use of language to translate it " soul " in the passage 
we are considering, for it means " life " in the highest 
and deepest sense. Anyhow the object of our Lord 
in St. Matthew xvi. 26 is certainly not (as the A.V. 
suggests without a shadow of excuse) to exalt the 
soul as compared with the life, but to magnify the 
greatness of the sacrifice demanded in the previous 
verse. A man who has the Spirit of Christ must 

1 Matt. x. 28. 2 Matt. xi. 29. 



170 The kingdom of heaven 

be prepared to lose even his life, or soul ; a stupendous 
sacrifice indeed, for what can conceivably be more 
precious to him than his life, or soul ! But so it is. 
When a man is really possessed with the spirit of 
self-sacrifice, which is the Spirit of Christ, he does 
not make bargains, or draw lines. He does not say, 
" I will give up so much in this world, because it 
will be worth my while ; but I will not surrender 
aught in the world to come, because I cannot afford 
to." It does not occur to him, generally speaking, 
to conceive that any surrender of eternal things 
could do any good to anyone else, or redound to 
the glory of Christ ; but if perchance it does occur 
to him, he does not shrink from it. St. Paul is 
himself a case in point, and a witness unto us. 
" I could wish that I myself were anathema from 
Christ for my brethren's sake." 1 No ingenuity can 
get rid of or even soften down that " anathema 
from Christ." It meant all, and more than all, that 
we could possibly understand by losing our own 
souls. Yet he felt that he could welcome that doom, 
so unspeakably awful, for himself, if only it would 
help to save his brethren. That it would not help 
is nothing to the point ; he meant it ; and so would 
anyone else who was really possessed by the Spirit 
of Christ. 

It follows then for certain that the conduct of the 
wise virgins was most unchristian. Instead of saying 
" Peradventure there will not be enough for us and 
you" — which is the language of purely selfish 
cautiousness — they should have said, "We are not 

1 Rom. ix. 3. 



The ten virgins tn 

sure that there is enough for all of us, but see — we 
will take the risk and share it with you." Nay, 
they might have said, "There may not be enough 
for all, but you shall have our lamps which are full, 
and we will stay outside if it must be so." It is 
no answer to this to say that the oil represents the 
grace of God and cannot be given away by one 
Christian to another. The wise virgins did not say 
they could not part with their oil, but that they 
would not. Their language was clearly and un- 
mistakably the language of an odious selfishness, 
which thought of nothing but its own profit and 
security. It is quite open to a good Christian to 
say that, if this parable is a representation of what 
will happen at the last Day, he would rather take 
his chance outside with the foolish virgins than go 
in with the wise ones. If our Lord's teaching means 
anything, it certainly means that it is a less evil 
in His sight to be careless and foolish than to be 
selfish and ungenerous. When we compare Scribes 
and Pharisees with publicans and harlots, we know 
perfectly well which of these two sorts of people 
our Lord had most hope of. It is only possible 
to conclude that, in spite of all appearances to the 
contrary, this parable does not represent the great 
division of the last Day except in one very definite 
and very limited particular. The wise virgins do 
not stand for the saved, nor the foolish for the lost, 
neither does the fate of the latter throw any clear 
light upon the final lot of the wicked. It is again, 
like the parable of the unjust steward and so many 
others, a story of earthly things and earthly people, 



in THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

the vivid colouring and dramatic interest of which 
is used by our Lord to illustrate the Kingdom of 
Heaven in one particular aspect of it. If anyone 
thinks that the parable is too solemn, its colouring 
too vivid, its interest too dramatic, to allow us so 
to limit its scope, let him consider again the parable 
of the unmerciful servant which has avowedly no 
object but to inculcate upon Christians a forgiving 
temper. When our Lord had some such necessary 
thing to inculcate He never seemed to think that 
any language could be too dramatic, too realistic, 
too awful in its suggestions. So it is here. The 
endeavour to interpret the parable theologically has 
been always a failure, because it refuses to lend itself 
to such interpretation without forcing, even if the 
great moral difficulty to which we have drawn 
attention could be got over. It is not even in 
praise of watchfulness in the ordinary sense. The 
wise virgins "slumbered and slept" as much as the 
foolish — a saying which some of the commentators 
in their despair are reduced to interpreting of the 
sleep of death ! Apparently that touch is introduced 
in order to heighten the effect of the oil — the reserve 
of oil — which the wise had, the possession of which 
alone differentiated them from the foolish. You can 
slumber and sleep as much as you please, if you 
have oil in your vessels. The uproar is sure to 
wake you in plenty of time to trim your lamp and 
join the procession. What is the reserve of oil? 
It is not possible to lay in a supply of the Holy 
Spirit, and then go to sleep. So all that line of 
interpretation, however attractive, must be dismissed. 



THE TEN VIRGINS 173 

Perhaps there is no interpretation which can be put 
into the technical language of theology. But on 
the other hand everyone knows that there are people 
who have in themselves reserves of spiritual strength 
and grace upon which they can draw in the hour 
of need. In ordinary times and under negative 
conditions (as of night) their superiority is not 
manifest ; but it is there, and when it is wanted 
it will appear. Any hour of danger and of trial 
brings it out into the open. The call to martyrdom 
gives it its greatest distinction in this world. But 
the Coming of the Lord will be the absolute test 
of it We understand, even from what we know of 
people now, that His Presence would reveal at once 
an extraordinary difference between very many who 
now look so much alike. In some there are the 
reserves of grace and strength, deep down perhaps 
within their truest selves, upon which they would 
instantly draw, and so be found standing quite 
naturally, without confusion, before His Face. In 
others there are no such reserves — all their grace 
and strength just goes to maintain a sufficient 
appearance now and no more. That will make all 
the difference, undoubtedly : though what the differ- 
ence will mean of loss and sorrow to the foolish 
the parable does not help us really to say. It 
presents that loss and sorrow under the most 
pathetic aspect possible, but not in language which 
can be converted into dogma. 



XV. 
THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS 

St. Matthew xxv. 14-30. 

For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, 
who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And 
unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one : to 
every man according to his several ability ; and straightway took his 
journey. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded 
with the same, and made them other five talents. And likewise he 
that had received two, he also gained other two. But he that had 
received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money. 
After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth 
with them. And so he that had received five talents came and brought 
other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents : 
behold, I have gained beside them five talents more. His lord said 
unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant : thou hast been 
faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : 
enter thou into the joy of thy lord. He also that had received two 
talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents : 
behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. His lord said 
unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant ; thou hast been faith- 
ful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : enter 
thou into the joy of thy lord. Then he which had received the one 
talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, 
reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not 
strawed : and I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth : 
lo, there thou hast that is thine. His lord answered and said unto 
him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap 
where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed : thou 
oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then 
at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take 
therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten 
talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall 

174 



THE TALENTS 175 

have abundance : but from him that hath not shall be taken away even 
that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer 
darkness : there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 



IT is an extraordinary testimony to the force of 
our Lord's teaching, and to the hold it has taken 
upon the minds of English-speaking people, that 
the word " talent," which meant nothing in His day 
but a sum of money, should for us have no other 
meaning than that of mental endowment. There is 
nothing to account for the change but this parable : 
and not the parable itself as a story, but the inter- 
pretation of it as it has become the common property 
of common people. The word has taken on its 
present familiar signification by a process which is 
purely Scriptural and evangelical. True, there is a 
certain narrowness in our use of the word which is 
instructive. The talents of the parable did not stand 
for mental endowments more than for any other gifts, 
capacities, powers, entrusted to our keeping. Yet 
amongst all the gifts for which man is responsible, 
mental endowments are in fact so far and away the 
most valuable and effective that the limitation may 
be pardoned. Much more serious, because dia- 
metrically opposed to the true lesson of the parable, 
is the tendency to think of " talents " as a man's 
personal possession for which he may be praised or 
envied. Nevertheless the word itself is a singular 
testimony to the readiness with which the English- 
speaking people have accepted those great ideas of 
responsibility, of fidelity to trust, of strenuousness in 
the use of advantages, which form the backbone of 



.176 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

their moral character and the secret of their great- 
ness. It is indeed a pity that they so often forget 
that all these ideas are our Lord's, and have no other 
source or sanction than in His teaching. That any 
mental endowment is a " talent," and therefore to be 
made the very most of, belongs to the vocabulary of 
the Kingdom of Heaven, and no one can use the 
word without coming under obligation to the Parables 
of the Kingdom. 

That we do so use this word, habitually, is a 
testimony to the fact that the lesson of the Parable 
of the Talents is very easy to grasp as well as one 
which commends itself to the national character. 
Had the point been less obvious, had it required any 
elaborate explanation, or indeed any explanation at 
all, it is hardly possible that the sum and substance 
of it should have passed with a single word into our 
common language. In this case, at any rate, it has 
been instinctively perceived that the parable does not 
intimate a transaction so much as inculcate a temper. 
That we all have one Master : that we have nothing 
but what we have received : that we are to make 
faithful and strenuous use of the capacities and 
opportunities entrusted to us ; all this is so graphic- 
ally illustrated, and is itself so simple and obvious, 
that no one has ever missed it. To the British mind, 
which is slow and unimaginative and very limited in 
many ways, yet capable of grasping simple ideas 
very strongly, this is perhaps the ideal parable. It 
is precisely suited to a " nation of shopkeepers," and 
anticipates in a singular manner the modern feeling 
about banks and the duty of making the most of 



THE TALENTS 177 

money. The commercial tone of the parable is 
indeed remarkable. In the Old Testament taking 
interest upon money is looked upon with horror. It 
is a thing which no good man will dream of doing. 
In the parable it is the ordinary and natural thing to 
do, and the failure to do it is little less than criminal 
neglect. It is true that this cannot be pressed in 
favour of " usury," because it may be argued that the 
lord of the parable is only one of the great men of 
this world, and is represented as acting just as one of 
them might be expected to act. But on the other 
hand it is clear that he is identified with the Lord 
Himself in an unusual degree, and his words are at 
times the very words of Christ. It is difficult not to 
refer the " well done, good and faithful servant," and 
the "enter thou into the joy of thy lord," to Him 
whose we are and whom we serve. It is almost 
inevitable therefore that the commercial tone of the 
parable should be considered as reflecting His mind, 
and this tone is altogether acceptable to the English- 
speaking people. To waste money, or not to make 
full and careful use of it, whether in one's own behalf, 
or in behalf of those to whom one is responsible — 
this is dreadful in our eyes. No parable, therefore, 
has taken hold of us quite so much as this, for it is 
exactly level to our thoughts. 

One thing only seems to detract from the wonderful 
effectiveness of the parable. The wicked and slothful 
servant is represented, somewhat elaborately, as acting 
as he does under the influence of fear and dislike. 
At any rate that is the excuse he makes, and the 
excuse is not declared to be false. On the contrary 

N 



178 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

it is accepted as true, and shown to be a reason for 
the greater carefulness. Now it is the universal con- 
viction that the "unprofitable servant" neglects his 
Master's interests almost always out of idleness, 
indifference, self-indulgence — not out of dislike or 
fear. No doubt there are a few who do really look 
upon our Lord as " an austere man," as One who has 
taken the old light-hearted joyousness and "abandon" 
out of human life, and replaced it by a dismal ideal 
of self-sacrifice and asceticism. And these few have 
learnt to express their dislike of Him without mitiga- 
tion or remorse. But their attitude is not at all that 
of the slothful servant in the parable. They do not 
propose to keep their talent laid up in order to be 
returned to the Giver: they propose to make the 
very utmost of it in the service of another master. 
It would in fact be almost impossible to find anybody 
at the present time who at all accurately corresponded 
to that servant. He does not seem to be drawn from 
real life. It is practically impossible to regard our 
Lord as hard, exacting, and unfair towards His own 
servants ; and the temptation to make that an excuse 
for doing nothing scarcely exists. If the servant had 
said, " Lord, thou gavest me but one talent and it did 
not seem worth while to do anything with it because 
it meant so very little," we should have recognized 
the type at once : as it is, we may say that this is 
what he really meant, but we have no authority 
whatever for saying so. There are a dozen very 
common faults of character which would have 
produced the same bad conduct — idleness, slack- 
ness, bad temper, envy, and so forth ; but our Lore] 



THE TALENTS 179 

has left them all out, and indicated another which 
is almost unknown. That slavish attitude of mind, 
of which the dominant principle is fear and personal 
dislike, so accentuated as to make a man reckless 
even of his own interests, is quite foreign to Chris- 
tianity. The disposition to presume upon our Lord's 
goodness has always been incalculably stronger than 
the disposition to exaggerate His severity. It is no 
use trying to conceal this fact from ourselves, and 
therefore we are driven to suppose that the bad 
servant was not intended to represent any class of 
people in the Church. He stands in the parable 
simply as a foil to the faithful servants. His having 
only one talent entrusted to him is not meant to 
suggest an excuse (for there is no hint that it was 
so regarded or alleged), but to aggravate his fault. 
He was only asked to take a little pains, and make 
the best of a small amount of property ; and he 
would not even do that. His surliness and churlish- 
ness form the dark shadow which is necessary to 
throw up into relief the eager and patient fidelity 
of his fellow-servants. Like other dark shadows 
its destiny is to pass into the outer gloom, whither 
all sorrow and sighing shall flee away, where weeping 
and gnashing of teeth shall find their home. The 
casting out of the unprofitable servant is a dramatic 
incident of the story which cannot be directly inter- 
preted any more than the taking away of his talent 
and the giving of it to another. No one has ever 
suggested any process whereby the gifts and graces 
originally entrusted to one man can be transferred to 
another. The wasted life of a man cannot be made 



180 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

use of by anybody else. Again it is abundantly 
evident that in this part of the parable we have not 
(as many have supposed) a thinly veiled representation 
of our Christian probation : we have only a story 
whose picturesque incidents suggest certain lessons 
of the Christian life — lessons which do not altogether 
lie upon the surface or in the letter. If however we 
leave the slothful servant on one side, we are justified 
in saying that no parable lends itself more naturally 
or more safely to direct and simple application than 
this. The plain duties of life, the true rewards of 
Heaven, are here more distinctly set before us than 
(perhaps) anywhere else. Nowhere is the great trial 
of Christian living and working so clearly indicated 
— the fact, namely, that we are so very much left to 
ourselves, and that for so long a time. Nowhere is 
the supreme reward more clearly shown to lie in the 
Master's satisfaction with our work and the Master's 
commendation of ourselves. Once and for all the 
parable puts us unmistakably in our true relation- 
ship to Him for time and for eternity. From this 
point of view there is not another parable of the 
Kingdom to equal it. 



XVI. 

THE PARABLE OF THE SHEEP AND 
GOATS 

St. Matthew xxv. 3 1 -46. 

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy 
angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory : And 
before him shall be gathered all nations : and he shall separate them 
one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats : 
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed 
of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the founda- 
tion of the world : For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat : I 
was thirsty, and ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me 
in : naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I was 
in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, 
saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee ? or thirsty, 
and gave thee drink ? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? 
or naked, and clothed thee ? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, 
and came unto thee ? And the King shall answer and say unto them, 
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he 
say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into 
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels : For I was an 
hungred, and ye gave me no meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me no 
drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me not in : naked, and ye 
clothed me not : sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then 
shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an 
hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, 
and did not minister unto thee ? Then shall he answer them, saying, 
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of 
these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting 
punishment : but the righteous into life eternal. 

IT is of course uncertain whether we ought to call 
it a parable at all. From a purely literary point 
of view the element of parable is reduced to the 

181 



182 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

barest minimum. It is only in a single sentence 
that the sheep and the goats take the place of the 
human beings whose destiny our Lord is declaring : 
"And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but 
the goats on his left." 1 Before this they have only 
been introduced by way of illustration : after this 
they are mentioned no more. It is not possible to 
imagine a "parable" in which the pictorial form 
should be more slight and transient than in this. 
Only for one brief moment do we see the sheep and 
the goats, which all day long have been intermixed, 
drafted out and separated by the shepherd ; and even 
in seeing them for that moment we know already 
that they represent the final severance of saints and 
sinners. Yet this momentary representation is in 
itself so striking, and has so powerfully laid hold of 
the imagination of mankind, that it gives a certain 
colour to the whole of this discourse. So much is 
implied in it, so much is suggested by it, that all the 
time we listen to the story of judgment and of doom 
we are thinking more or less definitely of the sheep 
and the goats. Other and deeper reasons there are 
for considering it a parable — but this would itself be 
enough. Before we go any further, therefore, it will 
be worth while to consider more attentively what is 
really involved in this remarkable comparison. In- 
stinctively we assume that the sheep is good, and 
the goat bad. There seems good reason for this 
assumption in that the goats are placed on the 
shepherd's left hand where the wicked are after- 
wards found. But there is no other reason. In the 

1 Matt. xxv. 33. 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 183 

Old Testament sheep and goats are placed upon a 
perfect equality for religious, i.e. for sacrificial, pur- 
poses. The very Paschal "lamb," which more than 
any other dumb animal represented Christ, might be 
taken "from the sheep or from the goats" : l in other 
words, it was just as likely to be a kid as a lamb. 
The same word stood for either. He-goats and rams 
were both used as symbols of violent and aggressive 
people or powers : but there is no trace of any moral 
distinction between the two animals in the Old Testa- 
ment. No doubt it is often the case that sheep are 
white and goats are black, and when they are mixed 
the contrast of colour is extremely marked. But 
sometimes the contrast is just the other way. In 
parts of South Africa the goats have beautifully 
white fleeces, while the sheep around them are 
almost quite black from the burnt grass over which 
they feed. Nor is there any reason to think that the 
Jews associated moral qualities with white and black 
as we have learnt to do. There was no shadow of 
reproach connected with the name or thought of a 
goat. It seems to follow therefore that nothing of 
the kind is implied in the comparison used by our 
Lord. Whichever one may prefer, sheep and goats 
are markedly different in appearance, and because 
they differ so much in appearance it is easy and 
natural to separate them. There is no fear of 
making any mistake, or overlooking any stray in- 
dividual. The whole point lies in the sharpness of 
distinction which leads to an equal sharpness of 
division. That the goats are placed by the shepherd 

1 Exodus xii. 5. 



184 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

on his left hand has in it nothing derogatory to 
them : as far as they are concerned it is accidental, 
and has no significance. 

Now we leave this illustration, so brief and slight 
but so picturesque, and turn to the narrative itself 
which it serves to illustrate. For, a narrative it has 
all the appearance of being : a narrative of things to 
come indeed, but a narrative plain and straight- 
forward and simple, which comes to us from the 
lips and on the authority of Him who is Shepherd, 
Judge, and King, who is without doubt to be the 
arbiter and disposer of our eternal destinies. When 
He casts aside the similitudes and parables which 
He has used so long to teach us the truth about 
His Kingdom ; when He tells us plainly, in language 
of awful solemnity, how He is going to deal with 
men in the last Day; what have we to do but to 
believe Him and to accept His words in their most 
literal and obvious sense? And this has been done 
— quite rightly done. Who can possibly know what 
the Son of man will do when He comes in His glory 
except the Son of man Himself? And if He choose 
to tell us that He will act thus and thus, who are 
we that we should say it is incredible, impossible? 
Accordingly almost all men have agreed to find in 
this sublime discourse a plain account of what will 
happen when Christ comes again to judge the world. 
Nevertheless, the difficulties are so enormous, so over- 
whelming, that it is at least necessary to suspend our 
judgment until we have fairly weighed them. If it 
should after all appear that, in the face of the New 
Testament teaching generally, this description of 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 185 

the final division of mankind cannot be literally- 
accepted, then we shall be compelled — not indeed 
for one moment to disbelieve our Lord, but — to 
understand that He is still speaking to us in the 
parables and figures which He had seemed (but only 
seemed) to have laid aside. 

The first great difficulty which emerges from this 
description of Judgment to come is that it is Judg- 
ment by works, and by works exclusively. True, 
this difficulty is constantly meeting us all through 
the New Testament. It is so clearly the teaching 
of Scripture that we have put it into our creeds 
as a foundation truth. " They that have done 
good shall go into life everlasting ; and they that 
have done evil into everlasting fire." "This," we 
say, "is the Catholic Faith" which it is absolutely 
needful to hold. Nor can anyone deny that it is 
true, without directly contradicting the Scripture. 
But it is quite open to us to affirm that while Judg- 
ment by works is a plain doctrine of Scripture, 
Salvation by faith is equally plain — and by no 
ingenuity can the two be reconciled now. Doubtless 
in the ultimate working out of things which belongs 
to God and to eternity they will be reconciled. But 
in creeds and confessions they remain, and must 
remain, incongruous and incompatible. We can, all 
of us, perfectly understand and absolutely accept 
Judgment by works. The thought of it is quite 
familiar by reason of our earthly experience. The 
expectation of it is quite natural by reason of our 
instinctive demand for justice. The strength of that 
demand is artificially weakened in our own case by 



1 86 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

the exceptional ease and safety of our lot. We can 
scarcely realize the fact that the great majority lack 
justice even more than they lack food, and suffer 
more from unrighteous treatment than they do from 
hunger and want. But we have only to turn to the 
Psalms to see that the demand for justice is the most 
general and imperious of all the religious demands 
of men at large. Men have needed God, not in the 
first instance to show mercy upon themselves, but 
to avenge them of unrighteousness and wrong, and 
to vindicate outraged innocence. The Psalms of 
vengeance, which we find so alien to our own 
religious temper, are the expression (quite legitimate 
in its way, and quite inevitable) of this primary 
passion of the soul — for justice. The Lord God 
Himself must justify His existence by clearing the 
innocent and confounding the guilty. How else 
shall any man know, to any good purpose, that there 
is a God that judgeth the earth ? Nor is it otherwise 
with that cry of martyred lives (" lives," not souls, for 
the life of a living creature is in the blood thereof, 
and it is the blood which is poured away "under- 
neath the altar") which has seemed so out of place 
occurring where it does, " how long, O Master, holy 
and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood 
on them that dwell on the earth ? " x To ask justice 
of God is even more necessary than to ask mercy. 
And if justice for others, why, justice for oneself too ! 
No one who has any loftiness of mind wants to find 
any respect of persons in his own favour, or asks to 
go to Heaven if he ought not to be there. " Judge me, 

1 Rev. vi. 10. 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 187 

O God," is the natural cry of the soul which has any 
uprightness left in it. Whatever the result may be, 
and howsoever sorrowful ; at any cost, judge me, 
O God, according to Thine unerring knowledge and 
Thy perfect righteousness. It is before all things 
necessary to escape once and for ever from the false 
judgments due to one's own self-conceit and to the 
too good opinion of one's friends. In the most 
developed stage of religious sentiment, as in the 
least developed, the primary demand of the soul of 
man upon God is for justice. So it is that all men 
understand and acquiesce in Judgment by works, 
and would not be content without it, because it 
means justice. But the moment that instinctive 
demand is satisfied, another arises, as urgent, as 
imperious, and takes the place of the former. Salva- 
tion by faith is just as necessary as Judgment by 
works, and just as much a part of our religion. 
Those that seek mercy shall find it, those that lay 
hold upon the gracious promises of God in Christ 
shall have those promises more than made good to 
them. No one can be lost that throws himself 
unreservedly, even at the eleventh hour, upon the 
Saviour's mercy. "Whosoever shall call upon the 
name of the Lord shall be saved." 1 But it is 
certainly the fact (however unwilling we may be to 
admit it) that we never can combine in thought these 
two truths ; never can frame an expectation of the 
future which shall unite them. Both are stated, 
quite broadly and unreservedly, in the New Testa- 
ment : are stated unequivocally, and are left to 

1 Acts ii. 21 ; Rom. x. 13. 



1 88 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

themselves. Sometimes the Church or the individual 
is led to dwell more upon the one, sometimes more 
upon the other. But both are there, and both are 
true ; and they cannot possibly be reconciled by 
human thought, however much we may try. The 
way to test general principles is to apply them to 
individuals. Take the following case. There was 
in a certain city a heathen judge who for his own 
base ends persecuted a poor widow who was a 
Christian, and brought her to ruin and to death. 
Now it happened that the judge was struck with 
mortal sickness, and felt a certain remorse for his 
evil deeds. So he sent for a Christian priest, believed 
and was baptized, and washed away his sins, calling 
upon the name of the Lord. Following these two 
to Judgment we are obliged to believe (with a con- 
viction which nothing can shake) that both of them 
will be placed on the right hand, and will receive 
that blessing which God's well-beloved Son will then 
pronounce to all that love and fear Him. To say 
otherwise — even to hint the least doubt — would be 
tantamount to declaring ourselves not Christians at 
all, but followers of some other cult altogether. No 
doubt some will say that the judge will have a very 
long time in purgatory, by reason of his many sins, 
whereas the woman will go straight to glory by 
reason of her sufferings. But, confessedly, all that 
is pious opinion and lies absolutely outside the 
teaching of our Lord or of His apostles. Our Lord 
in His doctrine knows nothing about purgatory, and 
nothing about the intermediate state. He looks 
straight across to His Second Coming and the Day 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 189 

when He shall sit upon the Throne of His glory, and 
in that day He will judge all men according to their 
works. Nevertheless the wicked judge will go into 
life everlasting along with the widow whom he perse- 
cuted unto death. We are not saved by works, but 
by faith — which faith may or may not have time and 
opportunity to show its true nature by the works 
which spring from it. We readily and joyfully 
understand how the penitent robber was saved by 
faith : how he will be judged by works no man can 
ever understand as long as the world endures. 

There is indeed a third doctrine taught in the New 
Testament which partially reconciles these other two, 
and doubtless points to the ultimate and perfect 
reconciliation of them. That is salvation by mystical 
union with Christ — a union which involves the 
affections and the will and all the deepest springs of 
character and motive out of which " works " must 
ultimately come. This doctrine is taught by St. 
John and St. Paul especially, and cannot be got rid 
of by any natural impatience at what is occult and 
mystical. Those who are "in" Christ are saved in 
the simple and true sense of being safe. They have 
"put off" themselves and "put on" Christ. They 
have entered upon joint possession and enjoyment 
of that which is His — His life, His victory, His 
sinlessness even. There is a holy partnership, a 
solidarity between Him and them. He takes their 
sins, He counts their sufferings His own, He shares 
with them His very Throne. They " sit in heavenly 
places" already "in Christ Jesus." 1 All this is of 

1 Eph, ii. 6, 



190 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

course nothing arbitrary, it is not favouritism : it 
implies a real unity of moral character as well as 
of spiritual life — however little time and opportunity 
the moral character may have had to assert itself. 
But it is evident that this doctrine, like that of salva- 
tion by faith, is incompatible with any unqualified 
belief in a universal Judgment by works. Those 
who have everlasting life because they are "in 
Christ" cannot be divested of that life while they 
stand before the Judgment Seat, and then be re- 
invested with it. In other words, the Judgment 
cannot have any real judicial value in their case. 
Their eternal future must be settled, not by any- 
thing they have done or not done, but by what 
they are. When we think about it, we all agree to 
this : we cannot help ourselves. Even in the case 
of an earthly tribunal we recognize that oftentimes 
it only tries and sentences people for what they 
have done, because it has no other means of knowing 
what they are. If it could discover with assurance 
what people are, we should prefer that it should 
make this the ground of its decisions. When we 
can we judge others by the same rule : " wherein ye 
were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity," 1 says 
St. Paul. And so much more our Lord. If all nations 
are to stand before Him at the Doom, to be judged 
by works, to how vast a multitude must He say, 
"Ye never did me any good, or showed me any 
kindness — but ye lacked opportunity." " I was 
an hungred," He must say to these, "and ye gave 
me no meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink, 
* Phil, iv, 10, 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 191 

— but indeed I perceive that ye would have done it 
had it come in your way : but ye lacked oppor- 
tunity." All infants of course and young children 
must come within this wide exception, and all others 
whose lives are without initiative. Nor can anyone 
even imagine at what stage or under what circum- 
stances men do really pass under the law of Judgment 
by works. A very large proportion, perhaps the 
majority, must in any case stand outside it. What 
follows then ? Surely this, that Judgment by works, 
although true and certain, is only one side of a 
tremendous verity which in its fulness is to us 
unimaginable. It is necessary to say (for it is 
the fact) that in telling us of the future our 
Lord is limited by the limitations of our imagi- 
nation. It is no use His telling us things which we 
have no power to grasp ; no use His leading us 
through tracts where the wings of human thought 
do not enable us to follow. He says it, therefore 
it is true, is a right conclusion. He says it, therefore 
it is the whole truth, is entirely false. He may only 
be able to put before us some part, some aspect, of 
the truth ; and He may think it best to put that 
aspect before us as impressively, as dramatically, 
as possible. That is, apparently, His way. We on 
our part may be able to seize that aspect, although 
we may not be able to combine it with other 
aspects which are equally true. Assuredly all the 
references to the Judgment in the New Testament are 
more or less dramatic. No one now takes the details 
literally. No one supposes, e.g., that actual " books " 1 
1 Rev. xx. 12, 



192 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

are kept in Heaven, books which will be "opened" 
in order that the entries may be read out. It would 
be as reasonable to suppose that an actual " bottle " x 
is kept in Heaven, in which the " tears " of the saints 
are put. Who does not see that these things, these 
images, belong to the language of inspired Scripture 
— language which is so wonderfully poetic, and often 
so essentially dramatic? What it ever aims at is 
effect: what it does is to call up an image before 
the mind, simple, vivid, true to the eternal fact 
so far as that fact can be grasped by a human 
mind. By means of sensible images called up in 
the mind it sets forth the certainty that nothing 
whatever will escape the knowledge, the scrutiny, 
the approval or disapproval, of the great Judge. 
All things whatever, in action or in motive, will be 
"naked and open before the eyes of Him with 
whom we " shall " have to do " ; 2 no injustice will 
escape detection, no hypocrisy remain unmasked, 
no self-delusion unexposed, no unfairness uncor- 
rected. Justice, God's justice, will be manifested 
and vindicated absolutely. All the rest seems to 
belong to the dramatic setting forth of this supreme 
truth. There will be no possibility of concealment, 
of self-delusion, of false moral perspectives, of one- 
sided estimates. Every child of man will take his 
own place according to what he is. In manifesting 
what he is, his actions will be weighed, so far as they 
are available for that purpose, so far as they really 
represent his inner self. It seems impossible to 
doubt that this is what Judgment by works actually 
1 Psalm lvi. 8, 2 Heb, iv. 13. 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 193 

comes to as a part of our Christian expectation. It 
is true, for ever true — but only a part of the truth. 
It is not applicable to a large part of mankind, 
because they have no works good or bad. It is only 
very partially applicable to the rest, because their 
works do not fairly represent them : their lack of 
opportunity, and also their self-reproach and efforts 
to do better, have to be taken into account. It is 
not absolutely or certainly applicable to any single 
soul (at least on the bad side), because at the very 
last he may by faith leave his old self behind and 
find a better and truer self in Christ. Judgment 
by works, however much insisted on in Scripture, 
may never be taught as if it were a simple truth 
perfect in itself. It cannot in fact stand alone. 
It instantly topples over if we try to make it do so. 
It corresponds to and satisfies one imperious instinct 
of our human nature which belongs to its divine 
original. But by itself it would fail to satisfy, it 
would rather awake to intolerable pain, other 
instincts as imperious and as universal. We want 
justice : but we want mercy too. Above all, we 
want a union with God in which both justice and 
mercy will live, yet no longer as distinct, far less 
as mutually opposed, but as one and the same 
goodness of God. 

If this be so, it follows that our Lord's discourse 
in the latter half of St. Matthew xxv. is not a 
prophetic description of what will happen at the 
last. Day, but a dramatic presentation of Judgment 
intended to set forth one particular aspect of it. For 
it is Judgment by works and nothing else. Even 
o 



194 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

motives are excluded, so far as they can be accounted 
Christian. For the righteous are quite ignorant that 
they are succouring Christ, and the wicked that they 
are neglecting Him. The division of all men into 
two lots — the one for Heaven, and the other for Hell 
— follows strictly and unhesitatingly the simple line 
of what they have actually done or not done, just 
as if there were not the slightest difficulty about it. 
But we have seen that the difficulties are insuperable. 
Quite reverently, on the strength of His own teaching 
and the teaching of His apostles — quite reverently, 
but quite certainly, we say that the truth of this 
picture of Judgment is very partial and very limited. 
And in practice all good Christians believe and teach 
as if it were so. 

For it is not only Judgment by works and nothing 
else ; it is Judgment by one particular class of works 
which are the outcome of a single virtue. As in the 
parable of the Virgins our Lord was pleased to make 
everything depend upon the possession of certain 
reserves of strength and grace — which are themselves 
dependent upon seriousness and foresight ; as in the 
parable of the Servants He made everything turn 
upon faithfulness in the use of "talents"; so now, in 
the most profoundly solemn of all discourses, He 
magnifies charity as the first and greatest of virtues, 
in comparison with which all other virtues may (for 
the moment) be ignored. But only for the moment, 
and only for the sake of dramatic effect. By no 
possibility can any Christian man persuade himself 
that charity is the only virtue which differentiates 
a saint from a sinner, or that charity is the only 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 195 

virtue which Christ loves and praises. Is justice 
nothing? Shall purity go for nought? Even St. 
James, who preaches to us with such delightful 
simplicity the old Galilean Gospel of those never-to- 
be-forgotten " days of the Son of man/' tells us that 
pure religion and undefiled includes the keeping of 
oneself unspotted from the world as well as visiting 
widows and orphans. 1 Suppose these two things the 
sole constituents of acceptable religion, yet only one 
of these is charity, and the two by no means always 
or naturally go together. Common experience, which 
cannot be mistaken, tells us that a very loose manner 
of living not at all unfrequently goes hand in hand 
with a kindness of heart which is very beautiful and 
admirable. Drunkards, and harlots, and people who 
do not know what truth means, will share their last 
morsel with some starving wretch, and put them- 
selves to any amount of fatigue and trouble to show 
kindness to dying folk. By all means let us praise 
and magnify their charity. It is quite impossible 
to say how precious it may be in the eyes of Christ, 
It may stand these poor creatures in better stead 
in the Day of Judgment than all the churchgoing 
and all the religious observances of the most 
respectable people who had a deaf ear and a cold 
heart for the sorrows of others. We have every 
reason, as Christians, to believe that such will be 
the case. We rejoice to think so. But that is quite 
another thing from affirming that charity is the only 
virtue that matters : and that is what we must affirm 
if we are to take our Lord literally here. In that 

1 James i. 27. 



196 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

case the moral teaching of so many modern novels 
is really justified. It matters not how vile and de- 
graded a life a man may be living — how great a curse 
he may be to himself and his neighbours. He has 
left in him the power of heroic self-sacrifice for the 
sake of another, and in some supreme moment he 
puts forth that power and does some good at a great 
cost, probably at the cost of his life. And that is 
the highest level to which human life and death 
can reach in modern fiction. Is it possible to say 
that such an ideal is Christian? or that our Lord 
would have acknowledged it? Surely to preach 
habitual kindness, with occasional flashes of heroic 
self-devotion, is to come down from the level of 
Christianity, and to take up frankly with the ideals 
of heathenism. No doubt when we speak of virtues 
we must gladly agree that " the greatest of these is 
charity " ; x but we cannot possibly concede that 
charity is the only virtue, or the only virtue that 
will be of any value in the last Day. The fact is, 
as a long and wide experience has taught us, the 
Christian virtues are distributed in a very unexpected, 
and indeed inexplicable, way. There are whole 
nations which love and practise chastity, but have 
no sense of truth and do not mind how much they 
lie. There are other nations which are grievously 
unclean in private life, but have a high sense of 
justice and honour, and a chivalrous eagerness to 
champion the wrongs of others. So it is with in- 
dividuals. They take the perfect code of Christ, the 
law of liberty, and divide it amongst them, so that 

1 1 Cor. xiii. 13. 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 197 

hardly any is complete, and hardly any wanting 
in some redeeming trait. So they live, and so they 
die. How is the great Judge to discern amongst 
them at the last Day ? We cannot tell : we cannot 
even guess. But one thing we are sure of. He will 
not take the short and easy way of saying " never 
mind about anything else : if you were kind to other 
people, you go to the right — if not, to the left." 
That is impossible, because it would be unrighteous. 
So far as we are to be judged by our works at all, 
it must be by all our works ; by those which belong 
to justice and injustice, to purity and impurity, to 
courage and cowardice, to patience and despair, as 
well as those which can be set down to kindness and 
unkindness. 

Some commentators, perceiving the impossibility 
of making charity the sole and sufficient line of 
demarcation among Christians, have sought to evade 
the difficulty by denying that the parable refers to 
Christians at all. Christian people, they say, will 
be judged by Christian standards as made known 
in the New Testament. But the heathen cannot 
be so judged because they have not known the 
requirements of "the law of liberty." 1 They can 
only be punished or rewarded according to a rule 
which they all understand, because it is written in 
their hearts. Whatever else they are ignorant of, 
they know they ought to be good and kind to one 
another, and very often they are. The barbarous 
people of Malta may very probably have led evil 
lives in many ways, but they showed "no little 

1 James ii. 12, 



198 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

kindness" to St. Paul and his shipwrecked com- 
panions. 1 Barbarous people very generally do show 
kindness to helpless strangers — more kindness than 
can be reckoned on among Christian and civilized 
folk. It is only (as a rule) when their superstitions 
or their prejudices are aroused that they act other- 
wise. Even among Mohammedans, with all these 
centuries of fanaticism behind them, the common 
people are not unkind or ungenerous when left to 
themselves. If individuals sin against the law of 
charity, it is not that they are ignorant of it, but 
that their better instincts are overborne by greed 
or malice, or by a habit of cruelty deliberately 
indulged. When therefore the Lord speaks of "all 
the nations" being gathered before Him at the last 
Day, we are to understand "all the heathen," for 
this word " nations " corresponds to the ordinary 
Hebrew word for "heathen," 2 and is so translated 
in Galatians i. 16, ii. 9, iii. 8, as well as in other 
places of the New Testament. The ignorance of 
both righteous and wicked that what they had done 
(or not done) had any reference to Christ, shows 
conclusively that they had not been Christians ; for 
any such ignorance is impossible in us, and if 
expressed could only be a deplorable affectation. 

Now this is plausible, but it is not convincing — 
and that for many reasons. In the first place, our 
Lord gives no hint that He is going to speak of the 
heathen as such. The two preceding parables are 
undeniably parables of the Kingdom, and this follows 
them without break or pause. It would require very 
1 Acts xxviii. 2. 2 D/V1 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 199 

clear internal evidence to warrant us in assuming 
so complete a change of subject. In the second 
place, our Lord distinctly intimates in this same 
Gospel 1 that "all the nations" (the very same 
phrase) are to be brought into His fold by con- 
version, baptism and instruction — the instruction 
clearly including the whole moral law as laid down 
by Him. In speaking of the end of all things He 
must have anticipated that this command of His 
would have been obeyed and "all the nations" 
brought into His Kingdom. It is only possible to 
look upon the nations of St. Matthew xxv. 32 as 
still heathen by getting rid of St. Matthew xxviii. 19 
— or, at least, by relegating the two passages to 
distinct and unconformable "strata" in our Lord's 
teaching. In the third place, we only thus rid our- 
selves of a difficulty at a tremendous sacrifice. No 
doubt the law of kindness is applicable to heathens — 
but it is even more applicable to Christians. We 
want it ourselves : we need to know that the test 
will be applied to us too : least of all men can we 
afford to relax our hold upon the great truth 
"inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these My 
brethren, even these least, ye did it unto Me." 
Notoriously that truth has been and is the inspiration 
of all that is most beautiful in Christian life and 
work, in the most backward of Christian countries as 
much as in the most advanced. It is so simple and 
so splendid. No one who believes is so without 
imagination as not to be able to grasp it. No 
imagination, however gifted, can ever exhaust its 

1 Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. 



200 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

fulness or rise to the height of its significance. It 
transmutes into thrice-refined gold the base metal, 
the cheap currency, of our daily work and care and 
thought for others. Like the strong and bracing 
air of the mountains or the sea, it is a constant 
source of reinvigoration for those who are faint and 
weary in well-doing. More than anything else it 
supplies an exhilaration to the spiritual atmosphere 
in which we live and work which is for practical 
purposes of unspeakable importance. We do not 
doubt that the heathen also will have the benefit 
of this ever-blessed truth. The acts of kindness and 
of generosity which they have done, in all ignorance 
of Christ, will yet be accepted as done to Him, and 
they will know it with a joyful surprise when the 
time comes. But it is even more for us, because 
even more to us, who do know it now, and therefore 
already enjoy the reward in great measure. Glad 
indeed are we to share with all mankind — Pagan, 
Mohammedan, infidel — this parable ; but we cannot 
possibly let go our own possession of it. 

To what conclusion therefore are we driven ? 
What but this, that our Lord's motive and purpose 
was not to let us into any secrets of the Last 
Judgment, but to glorify charity, that great and 
crowning virtue so dear to Him? In our Lord's 
personal teaching it is the exact equivalent of 
i Corinthians xiii. in St. Paul's teaching ; or, as we 
might better say, of His teaching by St. Paul. 
No doubt it is difficult to take that view of it all 
at once. We cling desperately to the conviction 
(which is so natural and, with our training, so 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 201 

inevitable) that a story of Judgment to come must 
tell us something about Judgment to come. Only 
very slowly, righting the ground inch by inch, we 
are driven back and back upon the only tenable 
position. Our Lord, desiring to pass His own 
eulogium upon charity as the most beautiful and 
the most necessary of all things which are to flourish 
and abound in His Kingdom, permits Himself to 
throw this eulogium into the form of a dramatic 
description of the Judgment day. It is astonishing ; 
it would be incredible, if it were not the fact. But 
once we recover from our astonishment, we are 
easily able to receive it not only with profound 
reverence, but with profound gratitude also. We 
perceive at once that we have lost nothing. It 
never did teach us anything about the Judgment, 
for we never believed that active benevolence was 
the one virtue which would be taken into account. 
We always knew that the final severance for weal 
or woe could not run on such easy and simple lines 
as that would imply. We always in fact dimly 
recognized (though we did not like to acknowledge 
it) that the representation set before us was essen- 
tially dramatic, and had the limitation as well as 
the power which is proper to drama. We have lost 
nothing, and we are rid of some most tormenting 
difficulties. 

If we accept this conclusion, at any rate pro- 
visionally, it will be very instructive to compare 
this passage with 1 Corinthians xiii. Each is a 
eulogium upon charity, and each is magnificent in 
its way. But the two ways are so different 



202 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

St. Paul's eulogium is rhetoric, which rises into true 
eloquence because such a profound conviction burns 
and shines through it. It is evident enough, even 
from a literary point of view, that he is carried 
beyond himself and out of himself by the fervour 
of his mind. His very style is transfigured, and 
his words flow on with a swift and easy current. 
We can almost see the glow which comes over his 
face as his pen runs on with unwonted speed. 
St. Paul's eulogium is rhetoric of a very high order, 
with just that touch of exaggeration which is 
necessary if one is to use the language of men. 
Our Lord's eulogium is drama : it has no fervour 
in it, no glow of conviction or of admiration such 
as belongs to rhetoric : it is intensely solemn, with 
a solemnity which darkens into an awful severity 
or brightens into an exquisite tenderness. There 
is not anything like it in the world for effectiveness, 
for unhesitating boldness, for simplicity of appeal 
to the strongest feelings in common human nature, 
for art which consists in the avoidance of art. We 
are transported to the last Assize. The supreme 
Judge is on His throne. The whole human race 
is there. What is really on its trial, what is really 
in question, is love and want of love. But they do 
not appear as virtue and vice, as good or bad traits 
of character, as abstract notions. That would have 
been quite foreign to our Lord's methods of speech, 
to the mental atmosphere in which He lived, to the 
needs of those who heard Him. Even for us it 
would have been (by comparison) poor and in- 
effective. For them it had been practically useless. 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 263 

It is the concrete, the dramatic, which only can 
convey the impression He desires to convey. Love 
and the want of love therefore appear before the 
Eternal Arbiter as men and women who in common 
life show kindness or unkindness. As in that first 
parable of the Sower the good seed is in an un- 
explained way identified with the people in whom 
it takes root, so here in the last and most perfect 
of parables the blessedness of charity is exhibited 
in the endless felicity of those who represent charity : 
and this effect is immensely heightened by the end- 
less perdition of those who represent the lack of 
charity. Look at the two methods from a literary 
point of view, and we may say that the one is 
western, the other eastern : the one belongs to the 
people of Socrates, the other to the people of Isaiah : 
the one is modern, the other is primitive. From a 
literary point of view indeed the two methods are 
wide as the poles asunder, and belong to different 
worlds of thought (although so near in time and 
place). But from a religious point of view they 
are identical. They strike the same note, they teach 
the same truth, they are intended to have (and they 
do have) precisely the same effect. Neither lets us 
into any of the secrets of the final Judgment (which 
are in fact absolutely inscrutable) ; but both glorify 
charity as the very prince of all virtues here and 
now, and both go to create a spiritual atmosphere 
in which charity can live and move and have her 
being under all discouragements of this world. Our 
Lord's purpose and intent, equally with St. Paul's, 
is exhausted when He has persuaded us that charity 



204 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

more than anything else puts us in touch with Christ 
and makes us dear to Him. St. Paul seeks to do 
this, and does it, by a rhetorical comparison of 
charity with other gifts and other virtues — to the 
advantage of charity. Our Lord seeks to do this, 
and does it better still (if we may reverently say 
so), by a dramatic description of Judgment, in 
which all other virtues are left out of sight, and 
only charity is crowned. But drama has in it this 
disadvantage (if indeed it is not, from our Lord's 
point of view, the greatest advantage) that it cannot 
be translated into dogma. There is absolutely no 
dogma which emerges from this parable but that 
which comes out of the saying, " Inasmnch as ye 
did it unto one of these ye did it unto Me " : and 
that is a truth of this present life, exclusively. We 
are transported in a vision to the Throne of 
Judgment, and straightway we are sent back to 
our own homes, and the other homes around us. 
We are no wiser than we were before about the 
Judgment and the Eternal Future : we are infinitely 
wiser about the things of to-day, how we "ought 
to walk and to please God." 1 

Again, it is very instructive to connect and com- 
pare this parable with the other two in the same 
chapter 2 which precede it : for the three evidently 
form a trilogy the interest and importance of which 
rises as we go on. All three are dramatic : all three 
are concerned (in their dramatic form) with the end 
of the world, the Coming of the Son of man, the final 
division of mankind. If we ask ourselves what we 

1 I Thess. iv. I. 2 Matt. xxv. 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 20$ 

chiefly learn from these wonderful parables, the 
answer is not difficult. First, we learn to believe 
that beneath the apparent tameness and sameness 
of Christian character and conduct there is a differ- 
ence which will prove in the end a crucial difference : 
there is a seriousness and a foresight about some 
to which they owe (humanly speaking) a staying 
power, a reserve of strength and grace, which will 
enable them to overcome while others fail. Secondly, 
we learn to believe that since as Christians we " serve 
the Lord Christ," 1 it is above all things necessary 
that a man be found faithful to the trust reposed in 
him, and do his best for his Master's interests. 
Thirdly, we learn to believe that love is the fulfilling 
of the law in the widest sense, that charity never 
faileth to secure the most gracious approbation of 
our Lord, that no other virtue can compare with it 
in His eyes. Now all these are essentially lessons 
of the Kingdom, lessons for practical life, and not at 
all the less so because they are taught us by parables 
of things to come. Moreover, there is a clear pro- 
gression from first to last. We begin by taking 
things seriously ; we go on by making a faithful use 
of our gifts ; we end by spending and being spent 
for love of others. The first delivers us from this 
present evil world, with its incurable triviality and 
shallowness. The second leaves us good and faithful 
servants, trained in the school of Christ, and found 
worthy of His high employ. The third makes us 
friends of God and companions of the Lord, since 
God is love. It is exactly the same upward progress 

1 Col. iii. 24. 



206 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

that we find elsewhere in the New Testament : only 
it is presented to us in a dramatic form which even 
for us is much more impressive and striking than 
anything else could be. When we have learnt to 
look for nothing in the dramatic form but the tre- 
mendous effect which it must always have on the 
imagination, then we shall be able to give our 
minds as we ought to those unspeakably important 
lessons of the Kingdom which our Lord designed 
to teach. 

If this view of these parables be accepted, it will 
follow that the fate of the foolish virgins, of the 
slothful servant, of those on the left hand, cannot be 
directly or literally insisted on as setting forth the 
destiny of lost souls. Nothing is indeed more 
common even now than to point to the terrible 
words, " depart ye cursed into the eternal fire," as if 
they settled for ever the endless doom of the lost. 
Even those who disbelieve the dogma of everlasting 
punishment have been wont to quibble about the 
word for " punishment " or the word for " everlasting." 
Great doctrines cannot rest upon nice distinctions of 
words, and minute enquiries into their precise shade 
of significance. It is wonderful that men have not 
noticed that our Lord was not speaking about "the 
lost " as a class, but about certain persons who had 
not shown personal kindness and attention to Him 
as represented by His brothers and sisters in affliction. 
It is a very disquieting reflection that many — so many 
— of those who have bandied arguments to and fro 
on this topic have never shown the least alacrity to 
succour Christ in the persons of His poor and suffer- 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 207 

ing brethren. It has not occurred to them. They 
had thought that our Lord was talking dogmatically 
about " the lost " — with whom they had no personal 
concern. Does it not stand there, they would say, 
"then shall the righteous answer Him"? and must 
not these others be the wicked? Yes, they are — but 
they are only wicked because they neglected charity. 
That and only that is charged against them. There 
are no unbelievers here, no people who neglect public 
worship, no drunkards, no thieves, no liars, no un- 
clean persons — nobody at all but uncharitable people. 
For the purpose of this parable they are identified 
with the wicked, they are placed on the left hand, and 
sent into eternal fire, because our Lord does not wish 
to contemplate any virtue but charity, or any vice but 
the want of it. No one has any right to alter the 
most essential feature of the whole parable and to 
treat any part of it as if it referred to saints and 
sinners generally. Our Lord has not a word to say 
here about anything but charity. If indeed anyone 
can persuade himself that this will be the only test, 
the only ground of division, in the last Day, then he 
may without unfairness and wrong see in these words 
the doom of sinners generally — but not otherwise. 
If on the other hand, having considered all the 
parables of the Kingdom of which this forms the 
climax ; having especially considered the two im- 
mediately preceding which form along with this an 
evident trilogy; if, considering "all the parables," 1 
he comes to the conclusion that their method is 
essentially figurative and dramatic ; then he will set 

1 Mark iv. 13, R.V. 



20$ THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

aside any appeal to the words of cursing as if they 
settled the destiny of the lost. What they really 
settle is the eternal hatefulness of want of charity. 
What they damn is unkindness ; and that in the 
highest degree, and for ever. And damnable it will 
be for ever and for all. Though it should be found 
(as, alas, it is) in ever so small a degree, and in ever 
so really religious a soul, it will still be damnable. 
And on the other hand a true self-forgetting benevo- 
lence will be lovable, and will be a thing which more 
than anything else accompanies salvation, should it 
be found in ever so fallen and otherwise lost a 
creature. It will not be irreverent to compare with 
our Lord's parable that story which is told in the life 
of the old Celtic saint Brendan. However far below, 
however lacking in authority or inspiration, it is yet 
(from the literary point of view) of the same order. 
It is the praise of charity thrown into an extremely 
bold dramatic form which takes us into the realm 
and region of eternal punishment. St. Brendan was 
sailing in the northern seas in search of some island 
or shore where he might preach the unsearchable 
riches of Christ. In the twilight of the short summer 
night he passed an iceberg, and was amazed to see on 
the top of it a dreadful-looking man with a shock of 
red hair. Hailing the man, and enquiring of his 
state, he was told that it was Judas. This one night 
in the year he was permitted to leave his fiery pit and 
cool himself on the iceberg. And this because once 
he had come across a poor leper who lay helpless on 
the edge of the Syrian desert with the hot sand 
blowing into his sores. And Judas had taken off his 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 209 

own cloak, and covered up the leper, before he went 
upon his way. What we say about this story is that 
it is beautiful indeed, but grotesque. It did not of 
course seem at all grotesque to the contemporaries of 
St. Brendan. Why should it ? The grotesqueness 
is simply a matter of intellectual change : the beauty 
and the truth are of the things which never change. 
But in point of fact we have every reason to suppose 
that intellectually these Celtic saints were very much 
more in sympathy with our Lord's methods of teach- 
ing than we are. All life, especially all religious life, 
was dramatic for them ; and their religious beliefs fell 
quite naturally (as in this case) into a dramatic form. 
St. Brendan never saw Judas on the top of an iceberg, 
nor did Judas — as far as we can tell — ever show 
compassion upon a poor sufferer. But all the same 
the story embodies a true lesson in this dramatic 
way with infinitely better effect than any amount of 
sermons or essays, and was far better adapted to the 
character of that race and age. A man must be 
hopelessly narrow and stupid who complains of the 
story because it was not literally true. Dramatically 
it was true in the highest degree, and that is much 
more important and valuable for most men. Even 
so our Lord's story of Doom, which inculcates the 
same great lesson in a far more solemn way, has 
essentially the character of drama, not of history. 
One is Divine and the other is human ; but there is 
far more in common between them than there is 
between any parable of our Lord and a religious 
discourse of our own day. 

The whole question, therefore, of the destiny of 



210 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

the lost is open to discussion. It cannot be settled 
offhand by appealing to this or that saying of our 
Lord. When people employ themselves in the treat- 
ment of isolated passages, or the hunting up of 
texts, in order to support a thesis, an opinion, they 
do no good and they never get any further. All 
these controversialists, however fair and candid their 
method and their temper, err because they start 
with the assumption that our Lord and the New 
Testament writers intend to teach us a definite and 
harmonious doctrine about things to come. No 
doubt this assumption is natural enough. It has 
been fostered too by that habit, which was so 
universal in the middle ages, of treating theology 
as an exact science in which it was possible and 
proper to make the most absolute assertions on 
every conceivable topic of religious interest. Not 
to be certain about anything, not to be able to 
give a definite answer to any question asked, was 
to bring religion into contempt, and little better than 
confessing yourself an infidel. As a nation we have 
gone away from that, too far perhaps, lapsing into an 
utter vagueness of belief and a cold indifference to 
religious truth. But in some respects the revolt 
from the over-definiteness of mediaeval theology is 
altogether justified, and can hardly be carried too 
far. There are subjects about which our Lord 
speaks indeed, and speaks very strongly, but in 
such a way as to baffle every attempt to take His 
words literally or to translate them into dogma. 
On these subjects — and the final destiny of the 
wicked is one of them — it is quite useless either 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 211 

to put His language again and again through the 
mill, or to supplement His authority with that of 
the Church or eminent thinkers in the Church. 
For neither the Church nor any member of it ever 
had any source of information but what is contained 
in our Lord's teaching as declared in the Gospels. 
It is notorious that the current belief of the early 
Church about future things was as uncertain, as 
hesitating, as fluctuating, as it is now — and for the 
same reason. Doubtless in the West men were 
inclined to take our Lord's sayings in a more literal 
sense than they were in the East ; but that is a 
part of the general character of the Western mind, 
and we are quite alive to it. It may be fairly 
said that the tradition of the Church throws no 
light at all upon those problems of the life beyond 
the veil which exercise the minds of men so much. 
Speculation on these subjects has been always rife 
from the Shepherd of Hermas downwards. The 
author of that strange book deals with future 
things quite boldly, and by means of parables and 
similitudes not wholly unlike our Lord's. But it 
is as clear as day that he neither received any 
authoritative guidance himself nor was able to 
give any to others. His eschatology resembles in 
some respects that of modern universalism, but it 
is purely speculative. He did not influence to any 
considerable extent the mind of the Church. Nor 
would it be easy to say who did influence it in 
this respect. The cross currents of opinion ran 
hither and thither much as they do now, and if 
they ultimately set in one direction, that was due 



212 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

rather to the force of certain habits than to any- 
thing else. The habit, e.g., of praying for the dead, 
which the first Christians took over quite naturally 
from the Jews, inevitably modified the ordinary 
beliefs of men about the present state of the 
departed. When to their prayers for the dead 
they added the offering of "the gifts" in the 
Eucharist, and of alms, then a great religious force 
came into play which led to many and unexpected 
developments. But these had no theological value. 
It is quite possible to watch the process as it came 
about, to see opinion concerning future things 
gradually settling, stiffening, hardening. But it is 
almost impossible not to see that these changes, 
these modifications, were not due to any access of 
light : they owed almost nothing to any general 
or authoritative teaching of the Church : they went 
on in the dark amongst the common people who 
knew but little even of the Gospels : they were 
forced on by the slow but constant pressure of 
the longing to be able to think, and able to say, 
something definite about things to come, some- 
thing which could be worked in with their habits 
of religious devotion and observance. Even St. 
Augustine, e.g., has no consistent doctrine of the 
future life, except so far as it stands in connection 
with his elaborated scheme of predestination and 
reprobation. 

We have to fall back on the question whether our 
Lord Himself intended to teach any doctrine of the 
Things Beyond which can be stated with dogmatic 
certainty. His teaching about the Kingdom of 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 213 

Heaven, here or hereafter, is almost entirely by way 
of parables. A parable is for the most part fairly 
plastic in the hands of those who wish to make use 
of it for a purpose. It may generally be brought 
with more or less success into harmony with a pre- 
conceived scheme of theology. The process of 
"reading in" has in fact been carried to an extra- 
ordinary length. But in the end the parables assert 
their freedom. It is felt to be impossible to pin them 
down to the clear-cut and nicely-balanced affirma- 
tions of creeds and confessions. They are incom- 
parably suggestive, impressive ; but they always 
retain a large element of the mysterious, of the 
inexplicable. They are pictures : they are scenes 
from a drama : they have the glory of the shifting 
tints which come and go upon the clouds of sunset. 
Whilst they throw a flood of light upon the 
principles of the Kingdom, that very light baffles 
and blinds us when we strive to look into the secrets 
of the future. Our Lord's pictures of things to come 
are indeed, in a certain way, extraordinarily realistic. 
But they are too realistic for our purpose. With 
whatever regret, we have to put them away from us ; 
we have to say " it is impossible to take this literally, 
for it is not in harmony with His own revelation of 
the Divine character and purpose : it is part of the 
picture, and. goes with the rest of the picture to 
produce an effect and to teach a lesson which is 
wonderful and true ; but it is not possible to isolate 
it and turn it into a dogmatic statement." That 
is what we always come to at the last. It does not 
seem to be true that our Lord ever lifts the veil 



214 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

which hides from us the things to come. He lifts, 
now and again, one or more folds of the veil, but 
never all. By means of a hundred figures, simili- 
tudes, comparisons, He intimates the nature, the 
character, of the life to come, and the principles 
on which the last Judgment will be conducted. But 
something of the veil is always left ; there is always 
(even where it seems at first to be entirely abandoned) 
an element of allegory and of symbol which proves 
to be larger and (from one point of view) more hope- 
less, the longer we examine it. Finally, we are 
forced to believe that our Lord only taught about 
things to come in such a way as to throw light 
on the things that are. It is always and everywhere 
the life that now is which interests Him, which 
occupies Him. When His discourse is most " es- 
chatological " and most " apocalyptic " it is still, 
in the reality of things, our life here and now 
that He is illustrating. His constant insistence 
upon His speedy Coming, upon the nearness of His 
visible Appearing, has no other object than to create 
for us an atmosphere of expectation, an abiding sense 
of living under His eye, of being within measurable 
distance of the final award, which is of the first 
necessity to us if we are to live aright. In the 
natural and obvious sense of His words, they have 
been falsified by the historic event. That does not 
trouble us, because we know that His words were 
right and true, however little we can explain them, 
historically. And the atmosphere of expectation 
which they created remains and will remain. In the 
life we now live the Judge is always before the door, 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 215 

always with His finger on the latch ; and the " next 
thing" is always His appearing, His scrutiny, His 
award. Even that awful description of the last 
Assize and the doom of those on the left hand has 
all its true and certain reference to the life here and 
now. It also creates an atmosphere, not so much of 
expectation as of recognition. It opens our eyes to 
recognize our Lord and Master in the midst of us, at 
our doors, and at our mercy. It reveals to us with 
overwhelming force how much our Lord thinks of 
acts of kindness done here and now. If we try to 
make it tell us secrets of the future, then it only 
baffles and bewilders. It would not be difficult to go 
through all the other Scriptures and to show that 
however much they seem to reveal, the residuum of 
revelation when examined and sifted is almost nil. 
Nothing can be made of the Apocalypse in this 
direction. It too throws floods of light upon the life 
that now is and upon God's way of looking at things, 
but in spite of its name and form it tells us nothing 
certain, nothing definite, of things to come. It is a 
series of cloud-scapes, grand and beautiful and awful 
too, and no more. As a revelation of future events 
which can be set down in order it has long been 
given over as a happy hunting ground for unhappy 
lunatics, who take their pastime therein. Devout 
and instructed people know that it was given for far 
other and higher uses. Even so extraordinarily 
definite and precise a prophecy as appears in 
2 Thess. ii. about the Man of Sin — from which 
there appears no possibility of escape — is thrown 
again into an utter uncertainty by St. John's asser- 



2i6 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

tion 1 that Antichrist was already come. Tradition 
has always identified Antichrist with the Man of 
Sin ; yet St. John seems distinctly to resolve the 
Antichrist into a series of false and misleading 
teachers (or teachings rather) which had already 
begun to do their evil work in his day. It is quite 
open for us therefore to hold, on the authority of 
Scripture itself that St. Paul's Man of Sin is only a 
dramatic embodiment and personification of false 
principles which were more or less distinctly at work 
in apostolic days — and much more now. So that 
here also, where it seemed to be out of the question, 
we are fetched back again for all practical purposes 
to our life here and now. Everywhere there is 
promise that our impatient curiosity about the 
future will be gratified. Everywhere beneath this 
appearance there is real and solid teaching about 
the present, and nothing else that is tangible. Does 
not our Lord intend to teach us — in His own 
unexpected way — that we do well to leave the 
future alone ? It belongs to Him, and we can 
perfectly well trust Him with it. Heaven and Hell 
have, in some ways, been far too prominent in our 
religious systems. It is not only that the smoke 
of Hell has blackened the gates of Heaven, as one 
has put it : it is that Heaven and Hell have com- 
bined to rob our present life of the seriousness, the 
importance, the ^//-importance, which really belongs 
to it. A certain missionary hymn deplores the fact 
that the heathen are living " without one thought 
of heaven or hell." That might be even considered 

1 i John ii. 1 8 ; 2 John 7. 



THE SHEEP AND GOATS 21; 

a blessing. What is really (and unspeakably) dread- 
ful is, that they live without a thought of God as 
their Father, of Christ as their Saviour, here and 
now. It is after all only to-day that matters. If 
to-day is lived aright, in God and for God, there is 
no need to trouble about to-morrow — whether the 
morrow which brings fresh appetite for daily food, or 
the morrow which shall bring the end of all things. 
It is quite safe with God anyhow. The less we trouble 
about it, the less we speculate about it, the better. 
" Just for to-day " is the true rule of Christian thought 
as it is of Christian prayer. For all holy intents and 
purposes Heaven and Hell have neither value nor 
interest except as the background upon which the 
present life is to be thrown up in all the intensity of 
its eternal and immeasurable importance. Those 
who peer with magnifying glasses into the back- 
ground of the picture can scarcely appreciate or 
even understand the picture itself. 

This seems to be the mind of Christ as manifested 
in the parables of the Kingdom, and in His doctrine 
of the Future. He does not in the least avoid the 
future. There are few of His parables which do not 
run on even to the end of things. He does not spare 
even the darkest colours, the most terrible sugges- 
tions. He magnifies in every possible way the gain 
and the loss which lie in the future. But every single 
thing He says has its reference to the life which now 
is, and becomes unintelligible the moment that we try 
to understand it in any other way. Again and again 
we listen to Him with bated breath, we say to our- 
selves, " surely He is really going to tell us something 



218 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

now about the actual conditions of the Future Life." 
Again and again we find out, slowly and reluctantly 
maybe, that He has only taught us a fresh and more 
striking lesson of the life which now is. And we, 
poor fools, are filled with chagrin because we really 
know nothing at all about the conditions of life 
beyond the grave, about the course of future events, 
or the end of the world. And yet all such know- 
ledge would be absolutely useless to us, whereas it 
is " life eternal " here and now to know God the 
Father and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. 1 The 
parables of the Kingdom cover an extraordinary 
range of picture -subjects. But the Kingdom itself 
"is within you." 2 

1 John xvii. 3. 2 Luke xvii. 21. 



EXCURSUS I. 

ON SOME SAYINGS ABOUT THE KINGDOM OF 
HEAVEN 

IN writing about the Kingdom of Heaven and the 
parables in which its many and various aspects are 
set forth, it is impossible to leave quite out of sight certain 
detached sayings which declare the nature of the Kingdom 
in a very trenchant way. 

I. " The Kingdom of God is within you." (St. Luke xvii. 
21.) That would indeed be a most pregnant and decisive 
utterance, if we could be sure that our Lord meant it so. 
Unfortunately (shall we venture to say?) we cannot take 
it with the unhesitating simplicity of the author of the 
" Imitation of Christ," because as the words stand in the 
Greek they are susceptible of another rendering. The 
Revised Version has in the margin, "The Kingdom of 
God is in the midst of you " : and this is preferred by 
Dr. Plummer in his recent commentary ("International 
Critical : St. Luke "). As far as the grammar is concerned 
either translation is equally tenable, and the choice 
between them turns upon considerations which are fairly 
well balanced. The immediate context favours " in the 
midst of you," for our Lord was speaking to the Pharisees 
who expected the Kingdom to be ushered in with signs and 
portents, with pomp and circumstance. That, He said, 
was a fundamental error. It was the very nature of the 
Kingdom to come in quietness and without attracting 

219 



220 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

observation. Men would not be able to point the finger 
at it and say " here it comes," " for, behold, the Kingdom 
of God is [already] amongst you." If we take it so, we 
recall at once the words of John the Baptist (St. John i. 
26), "in the midst of you standeth one whom ye know 
not." It is true that the two words are not identical : but 
they seem to be indistinguishable in meaning. In both 
cases the Jews overlooked the really important and crucial 
fact because they were looking at or looking for something 
more conspicuous. By the singularity of his life and 
preaching John the Baptist had forced himself upon the 
attention of all the people, and even of the Rulers. They 
discussed the question whether he could be the Expected, 
wholly oblivious of the fact that the Expected had been 
for thirty years domiciled among them. So again they 
discussed the signs of the promised Kingdom, and asked 
our Lord's opinion about them, in total ignorance of the 
fact that the Kingdom was already set up in their midst. 
It was undoubtedly all part of the same fundamental and 
persistent error, and it was rebuked in almost identical 
words. " He is here ; it is here ; here — in the very midst 
of you — if you only knew it." There is no doubt that such 
is the common -sense interpretation of these memorable 
words, and as such it must always command our respectful 
acquiescence, if nothing more. 

But there is much to be said on the other side. " The 
Kingdom of God is ivithin you " goes further than the 
other, further than the immediate occasion required : more- 
over it is not addressed to the Rulers, but to mankind 
at large. But all that is quite in keeping with our Lord's 
manner. When, e.g., our Lord exclaimed (St. John iv. 48) 
" Except ye see signs and wonders ye will in no wise 
believe," He was assuredly not speaking to that simple- 
minded nobleman from Capernaum. Only a hopeless 



ON SOME SAYINGS 221 

stupidity will go on maintaining that. He had in His 
mind's eye the general mass of the Galileans who received 
Him because they had seen or heard of His miracles, but 
had no mind to accept His claims or His teachings : He 
saw behind them an innumerable multitude of all nations 
whose attitude towards the Kingdom would be equally 
unspiritual and unsatisfactory : and in the sorrow of His 
heart He spoke to them, as represented (for the moment) 
by the supplicant before Him. It is impossible to doubt 
that His words over and over again surpassed the scope 
and range of what was immediately present. We are 
justified therefore in thinking it possible, and even prob- 
able, that in answering the question of the Pharisees 
He gave utterance to a saying of the widest and most 
lasting significance. "The Kingdom of God is within 
you " : i.e., its most characteristic development, its most 
proper and necessary manifestation, is an inward one — 
inward to the souls of men. In other words the Kingdom 
of God is a state of mind and soul which is reproduced in 
a multitude of individuals — a state which is characterized 
by the action of certain spiritual powers, by the dominance 
of certain moral and religious principles. If you want to 
find the Kingdom of God, our Lord would say, you need 
not expect to read of its advent in the daily papers, or to 
hear the news in the gossip of the market place : its pro- 
gress will not be reported in Reuter's telegrams, nor will its 
shares be quoted on the Stock Exchange : it will not fall 
under the cognizance of parliaments, or convocations, or 
councils : whatever outward connections and developments 
it may have, these will not be of its essence, because that 
is and must be inward to the souls of men. 1 That is quite 

1 The late Dr. Frederick Field took it in this sense, adding the 
following apt quotation from John Hales' Golden Remains: "Let 
every man retire into himself, and see if he can find this kingdom in 



222 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

in our Lord's manner, and we may accept it as His mean- 
ing. If we do, there are two things to be said about it. 
In the first place, it requires balancing, like everything else 
which concerns the Kingdom. For however much the 
Kingdom of God is within us, its manifestation will and 
must pass out into life and action. We cannot help that. 
We cannot really cry "hands off" to Christ in the name of 
politics, e.g. We cannot seriously maintain that the citizen 
or the official or the statesman should restrict his 
Christianity entirely to his private life because the King- 
dom of God is within us. It is indeed notorious that 
well-meaning people allow themselves to do a thousand 
things in a public capacity which they would never do as 
private Christians ; but it is certain that in this matter 
they are self-deceived, and will suffer a rude awakening 
some day. As Christians we are bound to give the most 
careful and scrupulous heed to a multitude of outward 
questions and considerations. But in the second place we 
must never quit our grasp upon the fundamental principle 
of the inwardness of the Kingdom. We are driven to 
deal with the outsides of things, with tests, observances, 
statistics, organizations, and so on. As far as other people 
are concerned we can only get at the Kingdom from out- 
side. And so it comes to pass that for an innumerable 
number the outside becomes almost everything. They 
never get beyond it : it absorbs all their interest. What 
a fearful lot of arithmetic has got into the Kingdom of 
Heaven, in our days ! What counting of heads, what 
touting for mere numbers, what adding up of figures, of 
attendances, of statistics, of all kinds ! " Religious 
statistics" they are called, by a curious euphemism, 
since no art of human nomenclature can make statistics 

his heart ; for if he find it not there, in vain will he find it in all the 
world besides." 



ON SOME SAYINGS 223 

religious. We cannot too highly value the services which 
the shell renders to the nut that grows and ripens within 
its shelter. But if one should spend his time in gathering 
nut-shells, quite indifferent as to whether there was any nut 
inside or not, he would be exactly like some very active 
"religious" workers of to-day. One is indeed sometimes 
disposed to think that the enormous growth of religious 
agencies and organizations in the present age must be a 
bitter disappointment to the Lord of the Harvest — for 
there is no corresponding increase of inward religion. 
Increase there may be; but nothing commensurate with 
the immense expansion of machinery. There are indeed 
no outward and visible criteria of the true welfare of the 
Kingdom. There is a vast amount of action and reaction 
between the outward and visible, and the inward and 
invisible, but the one gives no direct clue to the other : 
and it is within, and out of sight, that the essential truth 
of the Kingdom is to be found. 

II. " The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink ; but 
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." 
(Romans xiv. 17.) That is a glorious saying, because 
it is so strong, so clear, so sweeping. It lays down a 
principle to which one may always appeal; it is a 
fundamental law of the Kingdom which can never be 
abrogated, or shelved, or made of none effect by human 
explanations. Exactly like the former saying of our Lord's, 
it needs first to be balanced, and then (in this balanced 
state) to be reasserted. It is obvious that St. Paul himself 
had a good deal to say about meat and drink — from a 
purely Christian standpoint. It was not open to him to 
dismiss such topics from his religious teaching on the 
ground that the Kingdom was purely spiritual. He goes 
so far as to intimate that it might be a Christian duty 



224 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

to abstain all one's life from eating flesh or drinking wine, 
if either of these things were an occasion of falling to 
one's fellow-Christians. Elsewhere he shows very scant 
respect for the arguments of those Corinthian Christians 
who pushed his own teaching to an extreme. "The 
Kingdom of God," they said, "is within us, as our 
Lord taught: it is not meat or drink, as the Apostle 
has told us : this outward separateness of Christians in 
matters of no vital importance is a blunder: it has done 
great harm to Christianity by bringing us into suspicion, 
and has caused us to be plausibly accused of an anti- 
social superstition : we will retain all our Christian 
sentiments and principles — but we will accept invitations 
to feasts held in heathen temples." So argued, so acted, 
many of the Christians in Corinth. It may be said 
without offence that the vast majority of British Christians, 
under similar circumstances, would take the same line. 
A good dinner is never to be despised. And surely a 
man may have his own religion, and yet sit down to 
meat with Mohammedans or heathens of any possible 
kind, if they know how to behave decently. If the 
"weak brother" were objected, the reply would not be 
favourable to the weak brother or to his pretensions to 
interfere with our liberty. It is not necessary to condemn 
this attitude, although it is natural to regard it with some 
apprehension. It is permissible to think that St. Paul 
was convinced that in this particular instance the action 
of the Corinthian Christians was injudicious and unfortu- 
nate. In this conviction he wrote to them with his usual 
earnestness, and strength of speech. It does not follow 
that he would have applied the same line of argument 
to another case which on the face of it might appear 
very similar. He would not, e.g., have approved the 
severity of Tertullian, who thought it a sinful paltering 



ON SOME SAYINGS 225 

with idolatry for Christians to decorate their front doors 
with laurels in honour of the Emperor's birthday. For 
the heathens, it appeared, associated this practice with 
certain idolatrous beliefs and intentions. Clearly, these 
questions belong to that wide borderland where we have 
to reconcile the claims of Christian principles which are 
not coincident but complemental. No Divine regulation 
has surveyed the watershed, or laid down the exact 
frontier: it is left to common sense and piety to decide 
in each particular case. Even St. Paul could do no more 
than bring his own piety and common ^sense to bear 
upon the special questions of his day : and even he 
cannot free us from the obligation to use ours in the 
questions of our day. Still, we cannot forget how he 
wrote to the Corinthians that "thus sinning against the 
brethren, and wounding their conscience" they sinned 
" against Christ." Nay, he left it at least an open question 
whether it was not a direct sin against God. "Do we 
provoke the Lord to jealousy?" he cried; "are we 
stronger than He?" In other words, "are we so sure 
of ourselves that we can afford to sail so near the wind, 
and to do things in the name of Christian liberty which 
look perilously like playing with idolatry?" Certain it 
is that as Christians we can never eat or drink without 
some distinct reference to Christ, and to our position as 
His servants and soldiers. But then, apart from these 
considerations of the moral effect it may have upon our- 
selves or others, there is not anything religious about 
eating or drinking. It is absolutely indifferent; and all 
the Church regulations or Church censures in the world 
Cannot make it otherwise. In all ages people have had 
very strong ideas on the subject of eating and drinking, 
some of them sensible enough, and some very foolish : 
but from the point of view of the Kingdom they are 
Q 



226 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

equally valueless. To put it quite simply (and sometimes 
it is well to use great plainness of speech) God does not 
care in the very least what or when or how we eat or 
drink, so as we do not damage ourselves or others. And 
He cannot be made to care, and therefore it cannot be 
made to matter. All the old distinctions between meats 
were abolished for ever, when our Lord laid down the 
irrevocable principle of "indifference" in St. Mark vii. 
14-20. "This He said, making all meats clean." But 
the case which best illustrates our saying is that of the 
"disciplinary" decree about meats made by the Council 
of Jerusalem (Acts xv. 29). That decree has never been 
revoked, and therefore there are Christians (of a careful 
and punctilious disposition) who regard it as binding still. 
They point out very truly that not only had it the highest 
conceivable authority, human and Divine, at the time: 
not only is it recorded in Holy Writ: not only has it 
never been revoked: but in respect of "fornication" it 
is certainly irrevocable, and there is no distinction made 
between this part of the decree and that which concerns 
meats. Yet the common sense of the Christian folk has 
long ago made it clear to them that (apart from sanitary 
considerations) there is no reason at all why we should 
abstain from things strangled or from blood. Also it is 
clear that if in certain cases we should abstain from things 
offered to idols it would be out of consideration for other 
people, and not because of this decree. Even St. Paul 
told his converts they might buy anything exposed for 
sale, without asking any questions. Now on what ground 
do we justify this? Simply on the ground that the 
Kingdom is not meat and drink, and therefore no man 
may judge us in meat or in drink, and therefore the 
Church itself cannot lay down any permanent rule about 
meat or drink. It would be ultra vires, because it would 



ON SOME SAYINGS 227 

contradict our Lord's principle of "indifference." Only 
to meet a present emergency, and for present edification, 
may the Church lay down rules about food; and as fast 
as the special circumstances change, these rules become 
obsolete. They need no revoking; they fade away of 
themselves, because they are only upheld by some stress 
of necessity, or some present demand of charity, against 
the fundamental and permanent law of "indifference." 
All rules of fasting must ultimately fall under the same 
head. It is certainly within the power of the Church 
to make rules of fasting; but these require to be con- 
tinually revived and re-enacted either by the express voice 
of the Church or by the general consensus of her children. 
Otherwise they too fade away, and lose their binding 
power. We cannot make it otherwise, because the nature 
of the case does not permit of anything more permanent. 
The Kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and 
joy — and therefore it excludes the sins of the flesh for 
ever. It is not meat and drink — and therefore it can 
only allow of rules for present edification in respect of 
eating or drinking or fasting. 

III. " It is hard for a rich man to enter into the King- 
dom of Heaven " (St. Matt. xix. 23). To which He added 
the tremendously strong assertion that it was easier for 
a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich 
man to enter into the Kingdom of God. Of course we 
have nothing to do here with that imaginary gate called 
"the needle's eye" through which no camel could pass 
without being unloaded. That gate is a product (and 
a monument) of Western stupidity in dealing with our 
Lord's words. 1 It was simply a very ordinary proverbial 
saying to express what we should call "perfectly im- 
1 See Wright's Some New Testa7tunt Problems t pp. 125-133. 



228 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

possible." It is obvious that what is " perfectly impossible " 
in the common mind and speech of men, does in fact 
often come to pass. Much more in the Kingdom, where 
miracles are always happening. The real difficulty with 
us is not in the strength of our Lord's language, but in the 
assertion which He made. We cannot honestly say that 
being rich is any particular hindrance to a man's private 
religion. It exposes him, no doubt, to some temptations ; 
but it saves him from others. It does not seem possible 
to believe that this saying expresses a permanent feature 
of the Kingdom if we treat entering into the Kingdom 
as equivalent to being " saved," or being justified by faith. 
It is universally taught at any rate that a rich man may 
be a good Christian, and die in the Lord, without devoting 
more than a small percentage of his wealth to good works. 
It is certain that rich men very often wish to enter the 
Kingdom, and not infrequently lead exemplary lives. It 
would seem very harsh to assert that their Christianity 
has no reality about it, and will avail them nought. Yet 
here is our Lord's saying, which appears to contradict 
this testimony of experience. It is a great perplexity. 
There is however one sense of the words in which they 
have been abundantly confirmed (and unexpectedly too) 
by the history of the Kingdom. There is no reason that 
we can see why a rich man should not enter the Kingdom 
as a believer just as well as a poor man : and in fact he 
does. But as long as the world lasts he will never enter 
the Kingdom as a fellow labourer with God. It may 
sound startling, but it is nevertheless true that the posses- 
sion of riches is an absolute disqualification for success 
in the ministry of the Gospel. The enormous majority 
of mankind are poor. To the poor the Gospel is preached. 
Between the poor and the rich there is a great gulf fixed 
which the best intentions, the most kindly feelings, cannot 



ON SOME SAYINGS 229 

pass for religious purposes. The poor are quite accessible 
to the gifts of the rich, and in certain ways amenable to 
their counsel and influence — but not in religion. In this 
they will in fact only listen to their brethren who know 
by experience their sorrows, their wants, their weakness, 
who share the narrowness and sadness of their lot; not 
to those who stand afar off and try to get at them with 
good words from their vantage ground of comfort and 
luxury. Many things tend to conceal this great truth from 
our eyes — but it is a truth. All religious history bears 
it out. The Incarnation itself meant that our Lord 
emptied Himself of all His own proper glories and 
immunities and prerogatives, and put Himself down on 
a level (as far as outward things were concerned) with the 
poor of the flock, with the mass of the people. They 
would not have listened to Him as they did if He had 
lived in a fine house, attended by many servants, and 
surrounded by unusual comforts. Perhaps His poverty 
has been exaggerated in popular teaching. That does 
not alter the fact that He threw in His lot unequivocally 
with the poor, as distinguished from the rich. And it 
does seem strange that those whose great desire is to 
preach the religion of the Incarnation should have failed 
to grasp its most obvious lesson. To become poor — in 
other words to forego all the comforts and indulgences 
which belong to the well-to-do classes — is an essential 
condition for acquiring spiritual influence over the mass 
of men. This was true of our Lord, was true of the 
Apostles, was true of the early and the mediaeval Christian 
missionaries, was true of the Friars, was true of the Ana- 
baptist teachers, is true of the Salvation Army. The 
rich man may have influence in the world (though even 
there far less than is supposed) : he may have influence 
in the Church, regarded as an outward and visible organi- 



230 The kingdom of heaven 

zation; but in the Kingdom of Heaven, regarded as the 
Empire of Christ over men's hearts and lives, he has 
next to none ; the mere fact of his being rich for ever 
debars him from getting close to his fellow men and 
speaking to their hearts. "To the poor the Gospel is 
preached," our Lord declared ; and He might have added 
(for He left it in no manner of doubt) "by the poor." 
As far as one's own salvation is concerned voluntary 
poverty seems to be a counsel of perfection in the King- 
dom ; but as far as other people's is concerned, it is a 
condition precedent. It may be that this is what our 
Lord chiefly had in view in those extremely strong sayings 
of His about the unfortunate results of being rich. For 
did He not habitually regard men, not merely as having 
souls to be saved, but as having gifts and capacities to 
be used in His service? 

IV. "Whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of 
God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein" 
(St. Mark x. 15). We have already considered the saying 
that "of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." We have 
found it the only really available Scriptural argument for 
the baptism of infants. Other arguments there are, of 
course, but they are either indirect and precarious, or 
else they are neutralized by other considerations of a 
similar character and scope. But this one seems over- 
whelming. If infants are so dear to our Lord; if the 
Kingdom of Heaven is exactly suited for them, and they 
for it; how is it possible to refuse them baptism? The 
visible Church is not indeed the Kingdom of Heaven, 
but it corresponds to it — and the more closely it corres- 
ponds the better. How should we exclude from the 
visible Church those who are freely welcomed to the 
Kingdom? No means of admission to the Church has 



ON SOME SAYINGS 231 

ever been known but baptism. Granted all the difficulties ; 
granted that in other respects the argument is indecisive; 
our Lord's words about the children and the Kingdom 
will always settle the question for the great mass of 
Christians. 

But it is not the privileges of the children, but the 
character of the Kingdom, which we have now to consider. 
What was it which appeared to our Lord so admirable and 
so necessary in the childlike mind that He barred the 
Kingdom to any other? It could not have been the 
innocency of childhood — which is to us so great a part of 
its charm — because He flung the gates of the Kingdom 
wide open to the penitent. If we think of simplicity, of 
guilelessness, of openness, we shall no doubt have got 
somewhere near the point we want to reach. In doing 
this we recognize instantaneously a type of character which 
is difficult — if not impossible — to cultivate. No one ever 
exhorted other people to have this childlike mind. He 
might as well urge upon them to have blue eyes. Doubt- 
less if you have it, it is charming ; but if not, what can you 
do? All men and all nations — and, to a great extent, all 
ages — have the defects of their virtues. The virtues of 
modern, civilized, Western life are many and great and 
admirable : but the defects which go along with them are 
(generally speaking) fatal to anything childlike. We are 
much more likely to meet with this in a backward and 
unsuccessful community. This is part of that general 
balance of advantage which is no doubt so much more of 
a fact than we are willing to admit. We are filled with 
pity and horror when we think of the evil conditions under 
which other people in other lands (or even our own) have 
had to spend their lives, or have to now. Yet in some 
ways their manner of life has been more conducive to the 
traits and tempers loved of Christ. This childlike temper, 



232 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

e.g., which is so rare among the most representative classes 
of our own people, is declared to be necessary for entrance 
into the Kingdom. Nothing at any rate which contradicts 
it can permanently remain in the Kingdom. It is an 
essential element in personal religion. There is therefore 
nothing more to be said save that this declaration of our 
Lord's, like that other one about the rich man, is very 
disquieting. Over against our modern life stands our Lord 
in an attitude of sternness which is distinctly embarrassing. 
We do so want to be on good terms with everybody, and 
especially with Him. Moreover He has been always repre- 
sented to us in such a gracious and attractive light. It 
has been a foregone conclusion with us that amongst the 
enormous advantages of our modern life was this, — that we 
were at perfect liberty without let or hindrance to serve 
Him in a quiet and sensible way. Now it appears that 
however attractive He is to us, our modern life is not at all 
attractive to Him. He looks upon it coldly : speaks of it 
almost harshly. The evils of His own age, which He for 
the most part took for granted, have very largely dis- 
appeared. But the virtues which He demanded, on which 
He insisted with so great emphasis, are exactly those which 
seem to flourish least in our own age and land. It is — 
when one is willing to lay all pretences aside and to look it 
fairly in the face — very disquieting. One can only conclude 
that our Lord never intended it to be anything else. 

It is not of course pretended that these are all the 
sayings about the Kingdom which need to be carefully 
considered. Far from it. But they are perhaps the ones 
of most outstanding importance. They declare funda- 
mental truths which men are constantly engaged in 
explaining away, constantly tempted to ignore. Neverthe- 
less they remain, and will always have to be reckoned 
with. No ingenuity of argument or deduction, no seeming 



ON SOME SAYINGS 233 

CogehCy of clearness in the great art of putting things, can 
ever make any part of our Lord's teaching about the 
Kingdom less infallibly true. These principles — like the 
law of the Medes and Persians, but for an infinitely better 
reason — cannot be changed. 



EXCURSUS II. 

ON SUFFERING AS A NOTE OF THE KINGDOM OF 
HEAVEN 

THAT suffering is in a very marked degree characteristic 
of the Kingdom is of course a fact which lies beyond 
dispute. When the first missionaries impressed it upon 
their converts "that through many tribulations we must 
enter into the Kingdom of God," they did but re-echo and 
reinforce out of their own actual experience the repeated 
declarations of our Lord. "In the world ye shall have 
tribulation" was not an isolated warning: He had uni- 
formly asserted, or assumed, the same thing. The life-long 
experience of the Apostles left no doubt upon their minds 
that the law of suffering was general and permanent. " All 
that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer perse- 
cution," says St. Paul in his latest writing ; and he betrays 
no consciousness of the tremendously sweeping and 
unqualified character of the assertion. Similarly St. John 
at a still later date writes to his fellow Christians as their 
brother and companion "in the tribulation and Kingdom 
and patience which are in Jesus." Nothing could be more 
simply effective than the position of the " Kingdom " in 
this sentence. It is identified by the mere arrangement 
of the words with persecution from without, with patient 
endurance from within. It is one of the unsolved problems 
of Christianity how this unhesitating expectation came to 
be falsified in fact, and why (since it was to be falsified) 

234 



ON SUFFERING 235 

it was permitted to express itself so strongly in Holy 
Scripture. People gloss over the difficulty by pointing 
out that all who wish to be good and consistent Christians 
must be prepared to meet with annoyance and ridicule, 
and even some measure of petty persecution. They ignore 
the fact that these things are obviously not the persecutions 
or the tribulations spoken of in Scripture, and that even 
these are escaped by a very large proportion of Christians. 
A man who is determined to be honest and to act upon his 
principles will have to pay a certain price whatever his 
religion (or want of religion) may be. Qua Christian, 
however, it does not seem that he really has anything to 
suffer — except of course in the Turkish Empire, and in 
a few other dark places of the earth. St. Paul therefore 
was mistaken, or at any rate he gave a more unlimited 
and unqualified expression to his conviction than the event 
has justified. The vast majority of Christian people may 
live as close to the teaching of their Master as they please 
— or as they find otherwise possible — without incurring 
any particular ill-will, or suffering any persecution worth 
speaking of. 

But what is chiefly of importance from our present point 
of view is this, that the future glories and heavenly rewards 
of the Kingdom are uniformly connected in Scripture with 
the endurance of persecution and tribulation in this life. 
Take such a favourite and familiar passage as the latter half 
of the seventh chapter of the Revelation. What comfort, 
what joy, what a blessed foretaste of good things to come 
has not that passage afforded to Christian people ! How 
the words set themselves to music, the most tender, the 
most moving, the most triumphant too ! The music 
which has died upon the ear in some cathedral church 
in cadences of incomparable sweetness, lives for ever in 
the soul. And always it repeats itself, with a sudden thrill 



236 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

of great joy, when life is weary, and the heart is sick and 
sore. " They shall hunger no more . . . neither thirst any 
more . . . neither shall the sun light on them, nor any 
heat . . . the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne 
shall feed them . . . shall lead them unto living fountains 
of water . . . God shall wipe away every tear from their 
eyes." By how many dying beds have we read these 
words, and dying lips have moved responsive to them, and 
faded eyes have shone for a moment with the new light of 
that hope which is full of immortality. Does it not seem 
cruel, intolerable, to suggest to these good and gentle souls, 
whose hope is in Christ, that they have no right whatever 
to these words ? Yet what can we say, honestly ? " These 
are they which came out of the great tribulation." That is 
what the " Elder " told St. John, and it is impossible for 
us to dispute it. If he did not know, no one else could. 
It is equally impossible to pretend that the good people 
whose dying hours are soothed to-day with these Scriptures 
have come out of the great tribulation. As a rule they 
have had no tribulation worth speaking of, and certainly 
not that of which the Elder spake. They have washed 
their robes (mystically) in the blood of the Lamb. Be it 
so. But as they have not come through the great tribu- 
lation, it is sheer dishonesty to affect that the vision 
pertains to them. No doubt "sheer dishonesty" is a hard 
expression to use : but the use of it is justified. We have 
got into the habit, and the habit has become inveterate 
and universal, of taking Scriptures which apply only to 
martyrs and appropriating them to all Christians who have 
lived decent lives or died anything like edifying deaths. 
It is no doubt very agreeable, very consolatory, but it is 
dishonest. 

It may seem an extreme thing to say, but it is not far 
from the truth, that in the whole New Testament there 



ON SUFFERING 23; 

is no intimation of the future destiny of those believers 
who have not suffered for and with their Lord, i.e. of the 
vast majority of Christians nowadays. They will of course 
be "saved" — for "whosoever shall call upon the name 
of the Lord shall be saved." But we are not told any- 
thing about their state. " If we suffer, we shall also reign 
with Him " is the law which is always expressed or implied 
in all New Testament references to the glory which shall 
be revealed. " No cross, no crown " expresses well enough 
this law, which is yet so strangely ignored. For countless 
Christian people look to be crowned, who have never had 
any cross to bear. Perhaps they have regarded the 
common ills of life — such as they would have had in 
any case to bear — as their cross. But there is no 
authority for this in the New Testament. It is every- 
where represented that our Lord's disciples would meet 
with trial and suffering peculiar to themselves; and the 
patient endurance of such trial and suffering is made the 
basis and condition of their heavenly reward. Most of 
all, of course, is this the case in that strange book of 
Revelation, whence we draw almost all our pictures and 
our popular ideas of Heaven. It is emphatically a book 
of martyrs. It is penetrated through and through with 
the pungent reek from those living torches in the gardens 
of Nero. Whatever doubts exist about the date of the 
Apocalypse, the internal evidence is overwhelming that 
it is dominated by the fiendish cruelty of Nero; by the 
loathing which he inspired as the arch - persecutor of 
Christians; by the mingled intensity of horror, of pity, 
of love, of triumph, with which the author contemplated 
the awful sufferings — so awful, and yet so glorious— of 
those Christians. It is quite possible that all this intensity 
of feeling came back to him (in some state of "ecstasy" 
perhaps) long after, in the isle of Patmos. But anyhow 



238 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

it is the horror of Nero that broods like a foul and 
darksome mist over the book of the Revelation Upon 
the upper surface of that cloud, ugly and angry as it 
is in itself, the Light of God plays with effects most 
beautiful, most ravishing. Out of the rainbow hues which 
the inspired writer there beholds he paints the scenery 
of that Heaven to which his fellow-sufferers have gone. 
It is the martyrs' Heaven, and they whom we see in 
that happy place have come out of " the fiery trial," " the 
great tribulation." If any others are there, no mention 
is made of them. Most distinctly is this the case with 
that phase of the Kingdom, commonly spoken of as 
the Millennium, which is declared unto us in Rev. xx. 4-6. 
There seems no good reason for refusing to accept that 
declaration literally, according to the common belief of 
the earliest Christian ages. But there is every reason for 
refusing to accept the current teaching about the Millen- 
nium which finds favour with many excellent people 
to-day. That teaching insists (quite fairly) on the literal 
acceptation of the reigning with Christ, and for a thousand 
years. But it deliberately and flatly ignores the limitation 
expressed — and expressed as clearly as words can do it — 
in the crucial word "beheaded." The word itself is a 
peculiar one which St. John perhaps coined — just as 
"guillotined" and (quite recently) "macheted" have been 
coined — to signify death by a certain instrument of death. 
It does not appear at all likely that anyone was actually 
killed with the old Roman "axe" (the word here used) 
in the Apostles' days. Certainly the Neronian martyrs 
were not, as a rule. But the "axe" was the symbol of 
the " terrors of the law " — the law of the Roman state — 
and the horror of the situation for the Christians was this, 
that however they were slain, by the fiendish ingenuity 
of the Emperor, or by the brutal violence of the mob, 



ON SUFFERING 239 

they were still regarded and represented as social outlaws, 
as public enemies, as under the ban and the wrath of 
that State which was fast absorbing into itself all the 
powers and dignities of heaven as well as of earth. The 
deified State, represented by the "divine" Caesar, held 
the "axe" of the old Republic for ever suspended over 
the necks of the accursed Nazarenes. However therefore 
they perished in fact, in theory they were " beheaded," and 
St. John accurately represents the case by using the word 
here. There is reason then for extending the Millennial 
reign to all the martyrs. There is no reason, but an 
impudent determination to make what you please of the 
Word of God, for extending it to amiable and easy-going 
people who have never suffered anything at all for the King- 
dom of Heaven's sake. It is not very reverent to dismiss 
the vision as being without assignable meaning. But it is 
much more irreverent to pretend to accept it as it stands, 
and then to alter its terms in favour of ourselves. St. John 
contemplated the souls of the martyrs — of those who 
actually died for professing a religion forbidden by the 
Roman State — and he contemplated nobody else. It is 
not possible (unless the Apostle was strangely deceived 
or used extremely misleading language) for any Christian 
of the present generation to share in the first resurrection. 
He cannot be beheaded for the testimony of Jesus (unless 
possibly he be an Armenian) ; he cannot make himself a 
public enemy by refusing to share the rites or to accept 
the certificates of an established idolatry. 

That is no doubt an extreme instance of the way in 
which good people will play fast and loose with the 
sayings and promises of Scripture. But the practice itself 
is widespread and deep-rooted. It is necessary to revise 
all that we have so easily accepted about the future state 
of the saved, as well as of the lost. In both cases we 



240 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

have been far too ready to accept definite conclusions, 
and then to fortify them with passages of Scripture which 
do not really apply. That the future state of all who 
with any sincerity "call upon the name of the Lord" 
and " believe in the Lord Jesus Christ " will be safe and 
happy, we need not for a moment doubt. But there is 
extremely little said about it in the New Testament. All 
the great and glowing promises are for the martyrs, or 
at least for such as have really suffered for and with 
Christ. Our Lord Himself, it may be said, and the sacred 
writers, do not contemplate any alternative to suffering — 
except apostacy. Apparently it is so. But it leaves us 
without information regarding the future of those whose 
Christianity costs them nothing. To claim for them the 
glories and rewards of sufferers and martyrs is in the 
highest degree precarious. 



EXCURSUS III. 

ON THE DESTINY OF THE LOST 

THIS is a subject which is only negatively connected 
with the Kingdom of Heaven. We might omit 
it altogether; and in view of the apparent hopelessness 
of making anything of it, it might seem best to do so. 
But no one who believes in the Kingdom of Heaven 
as representing God's eternal purposes for His human 
children can put away the question whether it is to 
exclude, finally and absolutely, a more or less large 
proportion of the human race. In all things which imply 
struggle, effort, failure — as the Kingdom in our Lord's 
teaching undoubtedly does — we are forced to ask ourselves 
what is to be done with those that fail. We see at once 
that difficulty is not only the test but the condition of 
excellence — human nature being what it is. But we see 
as clearly that difficulty involves defeat of many (we being 
what we are), and that the glorious result is inevitably 
purchased at a great price. It is quite open to us to 
repudiate the common idea that' this life of ours was 
intended to be "a probation" — as though God employed 
Himself in putting His children through a series of tests 
just to see whether they could stand them or not. It 
is quite open to us to insist that life is "an education" 
of which the sole purpose and intention is training for 
something higher. That does not alter the fact that a 
countless multitude of people break down under the 
R 241 



242 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

educational process, and are morally the worse for it. 
It must be the merest affectation to deny that Judas 
was only one of very many of whom we are bound to 
say that it is a great pity they were ever born. In saying 
that we do not prejudge their fate : we have in fact 
nothing to do with it: we know what they are, how 
degraded, how malignant, how justly called devils and 
children of the devil by our Lord Himself and His 
Apostles : and in view of what they are, we are compelled 
to regret that they were ever born. It is indeed possible 
to regard mankind at large with complacency. It is only 
possible however on two conditions : first, that exceptional 
advantages of circumstance place us beyond the reach 
of human injustice or cruelty : second, that we do not 
concern ourselves with the moral character of individuals. 
These conditions are not recognized in the Kingdom of 
Heaven, and therefore from the point of view of the 
Kingdom we are compelled to see things in a light which 
is always serious and often sombre. We are forced sooner 
or later to contemplate the destiny of those who fail, 
morally. How many they are, what proportion they bear 
to the others, is a matter so obscure that it is useless 
to enquire into it. No doubt many sayings of our Lord 
would lead us to the saddest of conclusions if we took 
them by themselves. On the other hand, what may be 
called "official" opinion in the Church has been as a 
rule optimistic. The obvious fact is that there are very 
strong reasons, very grave considerations, to be urged on 
either side. Practically, it depends upon the general bent 
and complexion of a man's mind which set of considera- 
tions appeals to him most and therefore determines his 
conclusion — if indeed he ever comes to any. It is enough 
to say that a possibility, and something more than a 
possibility, of failure is contemplated throughout the New 



THE DESTINY OF THE LOST 243 

Testament. There will be those who are justly spoken 
of as " lost " : what is to become of them ? The answer 
to this question, which we find ourselves entirely unable 
to put away from us, has seemed very simple to the great 
majority of Christian folk. They have taken our Lord's 
language concerning the lost quite literally and it has 
left them no room for uncertainty. There is no doubt 
whatever that He habitually depicted their fate in the 
gloomiest colours possible, and in language deliberately 
designed to arouse the most poignant feelings of sorrow 
and of horror. Whatever else is false, the complacency 
with which the fate of the wicked is regarded by very 
many Christians is clearly false, because it is totally in- 
consistent with the tone in which our Lord habitually 
spoke. Unless the fate of the lost were (within His 
knowledge of it) a very frightful one, He could not have 
used the sort of language about it which He did use. 
But on the other hand we have found the gravest reasons 
for hesitating to take our Lord's language literally. We 
perceive that He habitually employed picture language, 
and that every attempt to read that language as if it 
were the ordinary prose of modern and Western life leads 
straight into confusion and error. The element of picture 
and parable in His teaching is constantly turning out to 
be more extensive than we had supposed. Even such 
a parable as that of the sheep and goats — which has 
always been treated as a plain declaration of what is going 
to happen — proves to be a parable throughout. As a 
picture of Judgment to come it stands no doubt in a 
certain relation to the facts as they shall be — but what 
the relation is no man can say. As the parable stands 
the "wicked" are absolutely identified with those that 
fail to show kindness to the necessitous. No such 
identification is possible in real life, or ever will be. 



244 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

We are obliged to conclude that we have here a glorifi- 
cation of "love" as the greatest of Christian virtues — a 
glorification which owes its peculiar form to the choice 
(or necessity) which did in fact impel our Lord ever to 
speak to the world in parables. According to His real 
meaning it was not "the wicked" who were to go into 
everlasting fire, but the want of charity which ruins so 
many characters admirable enough in some other ways. 
When theologians assume that " the cursed " of St. Matthew 
xxv. 41 are the same people whom they habitually speak 
of as "the lost" or "the wicked," they do disgraceful 
violence to our Lord's teaching. If we began to divide 
mankind — as our Lord does here — into those who show 
kindness and those who do not, we should get two sets 
of people indeed, but two sets which no theologian on 
earth would ever recognize as representing the saved and 
the lost. It is therefore quite illegitimate to press such 
a text as St. Matthew xxv. 46 as asserting the eternity 
of punishment. Those who treat the Bible mechanically 
as a repertory of texts will continue to quote it in this 
sense — but it will remain utterly unconvincing for those 
who have considered with reverence and intelligence our 
Lord's methods of teaching. He never spoke of the 
destiny of the lost except in picture language, evidently 
intended to produce the strongest impression of fear and 
sorrow on our minds, but as evidently not intended to 
be turned into dogmatic assertions. On this dread 
subject the whole effect of His teaching is gloomy in 
the extreme; but it is not definite, and cannot be made 
so by any possible ingenuity in the marshalling and 
handling of texts. 

Against the language of our Lord is often pitted the 
language of St. Paul in a few well-known places where he 
glories in the expectation of a final restoration of all in- 



THE DESTINY OF THE LOST 245 

telligent beings to their proper place in that great order of 
things of which Christ is the Head, and Christ the bond of 
union. Of this language also we must say that it is too 
rhetorical to be forced into the rigid form of dogmatic 
assertion. It points of course to a certain and glorious 
truth; but that truth is not so definite in all its outlines 
that we can assert it to be incompatible with final and 
irretrievable loss for some. Rather we remember that it is 
entirely the way of the sacred writers, and notably of our 
Lord, to take up some important truth and to insist upon it 
as if it were the only truth in existence — whereas in fact it 
is only one of two or more complemental truths which 
profoundly limit and modify one another. No " reconcilia- 
tion " of these complemental truths is ever attempted, and 
generally speaking it is impossible. It lies beyond the 
reach of the human intellect and is as inaccessible as it is 
certain. All we can do is so to accept each as not to deny 
the others. To be consistent, to be logical, would be to 
involve oneself in the most frightful errors, and to commit 
oneself to the most impossible conclusions. Even in the 
metaphysic of the schools, if we persist in running our 
thoughts to earth, we come continually to a point where we 
must take one of two roads, and each of them leads to a 
blank absurdity. Much more in heavenly things, into 
which there enters constantly the eternal and divine, the 
attempt to build up logically consistent systems is beset 
with dangers. The truths presented to us with so much 
ardour of conviction, with such a vivid picturesqueness of 
illustration, are most certain and most necessary each in 
its own place; but as for harmonizing them one with 
another, that is only partially within our powers. In 
religion, as in philosophy, we are constantly confronted 
with alternative assertions, neither of which is tenable, yet 
both of which can be shown to be certain. If our Lord 



246 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

chose to teach in this way, it was because He had respect 
at once to the limitations of our minds and the needs of 
our souls. For practical purposes we need to grasp clearly 
and strongly the various truths which lie nearest to us, 
which are to influence our doings and shape our characters. 
With the ultimate synthesis of these truths He did not 
concern Himself; and if we concern ourselves, it must be 
with the greatest modesty and caution, and with a pro- 
found distrust of the short and easy methods of ordinary 
argument and reasoning. 

So far, then, we have only reached this negative con- 
clusion, that an examination of texts leads to no certain 
results upon the subject of the destiny of the wicked. All 
we can say is that the picture-language used by our Lord 
leaves the most gloomy impression upon our minds — an 
impression which is only faintly relieved by the "uni- 
versalism " of certain passages in St. Paul's Epistles. But 
it is idle to suppose that men's convictions on such a 
subject will be formed by consideration of texts only. 
Behind all texts, and all teachings of Scripture, lie two 
things — the revealed character of God, and the revealed 
character of man. The ultimate issues of life and death, 
in their nature, intensity, and duration, must be decided by 
these. It is impossible to leave them out of sight — and 
yet it is difficult to introduce them without their lending 
themselves to wild and sweeping assertions which have no 
value. If we are to do any good at all we must be 
constantly on our guard against this danger. 

Let us see first what the revealed character of man has 
to say to the doctrine of eternal punishment. We might 
have expected that since man was obviously made to be 
happy his whole nature would cry out against such a 
doctrine. But it is not so. For what we are most 
universally conscious of is the fact of our free will, the 



THE DESTINY OF THE LOST 24; 

fact that for all permanent purposes we make ourselves 
what we are. That all men go to their " own place," that 
we shall reap just what we have sown, that we shall receive 
the things done in the flesh, whether good or bad — all this 
teaching of the New Testament commends itself absolutely 
to the general conscience. It may be confused with much 
talk about circumstance, temptation, heredity : and men 
expect that such things (whatever they are worth) will be 
allowed for : but they are profoundly convinced that they 
are free agents, and that they are themselves the architects 
and arbiters of their own future destinies. If this faith 
cannot be logically reconciled with the Omnipotence or 
Predestination of God, or with our own absolute de- 
pendence upon His free grace for anything good, that 
does not trouble us. A truth is not less true because it 
cannot be logically reconciled with others. And this truth 
of man's free will, and free choice, is so continually present 
in Scripture as the tacitly assumed basis upon which God's 
dealings with man, and God's sayings to man, are founded, 
that the two must stand or fall together. If man is not 
free, if he does not hold (as it were) his future in his own 
hands, it is not worth while to give another thought to the 
Scripture or to religion. But man's freedom of choice, 
taken by itself, makes for the irretrievable character of his 
loss, if he is lost at all. All experience points to the con- 
clusion that what we designedly fling away or deliberately 
forfeit we can never have again. Seldom indeed is a 
second chance given to us in adult life. Moreover, since 
it is a question not of what we shall have, but of what we 
shall be, it is clear that the matter cannot be settled for us 
— not even by God Himself. It is not necessary to enquire 
whether He could make a bad man good in spite of himself; 
it is enough to say that He will not. But if a man will not 
seek God or do good while he is here, what possible reason 



2 4 S THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

is there for supposing he will do so anywhere else? The 
discipline of suffering may be brought to bear upon him 
with more severity certainly. But on the one hand that 
would easily become a form of compulsion — which can- 
not be contemplated : and on the other the bitterest 
sufferings here have often no good effect at all upon the 
sufferers. Anyhow, if we agree that things will somehow 
be so arranged for the wicked that they will all become 
good sooner or later, we seem necessarily to impart to this 
life an aspect of uselessness and unreality which is very 
hard to reconcile with the whole tone of Scripture, and 
with the atoning Death "under Pontius Pilate." For that 
Death so emphatically belonged to this world and this life 
that, if the spiritual probation of man is to be extended 
indefinitely into other worlds and other lives, it would seem 
as if He must suffer in all those other worlds as well as 
this. And that was apparently one of the speculations of 
Origen, which so far has not recommended itself to the 
Christian people. Inasmuch then as men are so generally 
and so obstinately convinced of their own freedom and 
responsibility of choice, they will (however unwillingly) 
incline to believe that the consequences of a life wilfully 
evil must be unalterable and endless. Nature and human 
nature do emphatically bear out the statement that what a 
man has sown that (and nothing else) he must reap : nor is 
there any reason to believe that even after this miserable 
experience he will want to sow anything else — except under 
compulsion. 

The only alternative seems to be to suppose that God 
will go on making it easier and easier to do right, and 
more and more difficult to do wrong, until it reaches 
a point at which the human will is overmastered. With- 
out arguing the matter, it is enough to say that such a 
thought does not harmonize with our other thoughts 



THE DESTINY OF THE LOST 249 

about God's governance of the world: it seems altogether 
unworthy of Him. 

We have to do however with something more important 
even than human nature. We have to take God Himself 
into account. It is the great fault, the fatal weakness, 
of the most learned and painstaking investigations into 
this subject that they have left God out. In a book so 
able, and in some respects so fearless, as Principal Sal- 
mond's Immortality the whole argument (as concerns our 
present topic) is vitiated by this extraordinary omission. 
Every text bearing upon the fate of the lost is discussed 
with learning and candour. About the fact that God is 
revealed in the New Testament as our Father not a 
word is said. It is apparently regarded as having no 
bearing upon the question. Yet the destinies of the 
lost must be as absolutely dependent upon the will of 
God as those of the saved. At every moment of the 
eternal future whatever any living creature suffers it must 
suffer by the deliberate counsel and decree of the Al- 
mighty — it must owe to Him from moment to moment 
the very ability to suffer. There would be no difficulty 
in this thought if He were such a God as the Moslems 
acknowledge, in whom love and mercy are strictly (and 
indeed narrowly) limited and subordinate qualities. The 
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed 
to us as a God of love, as a God who is love, as our 
Father too. Our Lord teaches us to argue with all 
boldness and confidence from what we are as fathers 
to what God is as Father. He teaches us to scout the 
notion that we could be more kind, more tender-hearted, 
towards our children than He is towards us. " How much 
more " is the law of what we may expect from His fatherly 
goodness. It appears indeed that whatever love a father 
has for his children is only a derivative from, a reflexion 



250 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

of, the love of the Eternal Father for us. From Him 
"every family" — every collection of human beings in 
which a father's influence and a father's love has any 
place — gets its name in heaven and earth. In other 
words, God is not revealed as Father because His relation 
to us bears a certain resemblance to the fatherly relation 
amongst ourselves. That is far below the truth. What- 
soever has any thought or character of fatherhood (or 
fatherliness) about it among men is a faint and feeble 
counterpart of the perfect and eternal Fatherhood of 
God. God's Fatherhood is the original; every other, 
wheresoever it may be found, is only a copy. 

Since that is so — and that it is so is the primary reve- 
lation of the New Testament, which must needs dominate 
every other — it must surely be the merest pedantry to 
affect to ignore it when we discuss the destiny of the 
lost. In speaking of the lost we are speaking of lost 
children^ and of what they will endure by the will of 
their Father in Heaven. What does that fact involve? 
One thing it involves certainly and absolutely, viz., that 
God will never cease to love (as only He can love) every 
soul which He has created in His own image and likeness. 
On this point no good person ought to have the smallest 
doubt, because his own heart testifies with unhesitating 
assurance that it is so. "If ye being evil" — is there any 
point in that argument? If there is — if it is legitimate 
at all — it renders it impossible to suppose that the Father 
who has loved such an one (prodigal though he were) up 
to the moment of his death, from that moment ceases to 
care for him. How could such a thought have entered 
into anyone's mind ? " Which of you," surely our Saviour 
would say, "being a father could ever cease to love his 
own child, were that child ever so wicked, so obdurate, so 
lost?" Nor can anyone answer that simplest of appeals. 



THE DESTINY OF THE LOST 251 

None of us could. Whatever else happened, whatever 
else might seem right and necessary, no father (worthy 
of the name) could ever cease to love son or daughter, 
present or absent, alive or dead. Wickedness does not 
kill love, although it may mingle with it indignation and 
abhorrence. Misery only adds to it a boundless pity. 
That is indeed fully recognized as far as this life is con- 
cerned. With the parable of the prodigal son, and its 
companion - stories, to help us, we preach most unre- 
strainedly the love of the Father towards all sinners up 
to the moment that they die. After that the love is 
supposed to change into hate, or at least into indifference. 
But why? Granted that their state then becomes fixed 
and unalterable, what has that to do with it? A father 
does not give up loving his prodigal son because that 
son has been sentenced to penal servitude for life. On 
the contrary, the very thought of his irremediable misery 
will add a greater tenderness of pity to his fatherly affec- 
tion. Even supposing the man could change, and grow 
weary of loving one unworthy, this is not possible with 
God. He is love, and He cannot change. Our changes 
do not affect Him. No one has ever suggested that He 
loves us because we are good, or worthy of His regard, 
or likely to do Him credit. He loves us because He is 
love, and because He is our Father. There is absolutely 
nothing in the death of a sinner to make any difference 
to His love. If we were to estimate the love of God 
by the popular conception of it, we should have to conclude 
that He only loved his children as long as there was a 
"chance" of their becoming accessible to His love and 
profiting by it. That would be below the level of man's 
love. We do not cease to love the children who are 
(as far as we can see) hopelessly alienated, or even dead. 
As long as they are believed to exist, and to be in want 



252 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

or darkness, we love them without respect to what may 
or may not be possible in the future. We must therefore 
utterly and finally reject the notion that God hates the 
lost, or regards them with indifference, or forgets them. 
There is a famous sermon, said to be one of the finest 
in the English language, which depicts the fate of a 
lost soul utterly forgotten of God. It is little better 
than a blasphemy to suggest that God can ever forget 
one of His own children whom He has called into 
existence, whom He has pursued so many years with 
a divine love and patience. Imagine the earthly father 
that could do this thing ! For a long time he has kept 
his heart and his door open to this prodigal son : he 
has sent him messages of love and kindness : he has 
exhausted all methods to win him back. And then the 
son is cast into a dungeon without hope of release. " I 
shall forget him," says the father : and henceforth he 
eats, drinks, and is merry, and not a thought of the un- 
happy sufferer troubles his enjoyment by day, his rest 
by night. Can anyone believe that the love of God is 
so poor a thing as this, so much below the level of human 
love? 

What shall we say then of the wrath of God which is 
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and un- 
righteousness of men — which abideth upon him that 
obeyeth not the Son? We may at least say this, that 
"the wrath of God" cannot possibly resemble that dark 
and disturbing passion of anger which is so familiar to 
ourselves, and which is directed against the individuals 
who have made us angry. That God in His holiness must 
of necessity be an adversary unto us as long as we do 
amiss is certain. And the hopeless contrariety in which 
the sinner finds himself as towards God, involving as it 
does the dreadful weight of the Divine displeasure, is 



THE DESTINY OF THE LOST 253 

spoken of by a most natural figure of speech as "the 
wrath of God." But it is nowhere suggested that God is 
wrath in the same sense that God is love. In an earthly 
father the keenest sense of right and wrong, the utmost 
detestation of iniquity, does not quench his love for his 
children, does not make it less. As he does not love his 
child for the reason that the child is good, so he does not 
cease to love him for the reason that he is evil. If we are 
to believe that God does not love the lost, we must give up 
the whole revelation of the Fatherhood of God as a thing 
which has no solid meaning and no real comfort in it. If 
on the other hand we believe our Lord teaching us to 
argue from our own hearts to His, we shall be certain that, 
whatever becomes of the lost, God will always love them 
and always (if we may say so reverently) do His best for 
them. 

As He is, unchangeably and essentially, love, He will 
be love on earth, love in Heaven, and not less love in 
hell. "If I go down to hell, thou art there also," and if 
He is there, He will be Himself, He will be love, He will 
be the Father. However His manifestations of Himself 
may differ (for love is compatible with any degree of 
severity) He cannot be different Himself. Essentially and 
unchangeably He must be as much "love" towards the 
lowest soul in hell as towards the highest soul in Heaven — ■ 
and that for ever, since there can be no variation with 
Him, neither shadow that is cast by turning. 

So much then we have gained which is positive and 
unalterable. God will always love these lost souls, for 
whom He gave His Son to die, and will always seek their 
good. There are not any vindictive punishments with 
Him. All that is an evil dream. The fate of the wicked 
may be one of unspeakable misery, it may have no end 
visible to the human eye — but the misery will be of their 



254 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

own earning, not of His inflicting. The hell in which they 
find themselves will be the best place for them, and the 
least intolerable, they being what they are. The Father- 
hood of God, and the fact that He is love, make this 
certain. 

But while we can go so far — and it is an unspeakable 
relief to do so — we cannot go any further. There 
is a strong popular impression that since God loves us 
as a Father, He must be able and willing to make it all 
right for everybody. Why should anyone be unhappy 
under His sway of infinite love and power ? Alas, a 
father's love on earth can do little enough towards making 
his children happy. They take their destinies into their 
own hands, and (as often as not) make themselves miser- 
able. 

It is not easy to see how it can be the case, but to all 
appearance it is the case, that the Almighty in imparting 
to us His own divine possession of moral freedom has tied 
His own hands as far as our happiness is concerned. We 
can only be happy, if good : whether we are good or not 
depends in great measure not on Him but on ourselves. 
It is true that theologians as a rule would demur to this 
statement. They feel bound to safeguard the absolute 
sovranty of God by some form of words which conceals 
the real issue. But the common sense of religion accepts 
the truth as we have stated it. It is the will of God that 
all men should be saved. Of course it is, for He is the 
Father of all. If all men are not in fact saved — if on the 
contrary very many are lost — that is because it depends 
only partially upon the will of God. Very largely it 
depends upon our own will, and our own will is often 
enough not to be saved. It is not His love that is limited, 
but His power. There is no other possible explanation of 
the facts, and this explanation of them is tacitly assumed 



THE DESTINY OF THE LOST 255 

throughout the Bible; "why will ye die, O house of 
Israel?" 

It is useless therefore to suppose that because God is 
good, men need not fear the pains of hell. It is useless 
to deny that the sufferings of the lost may even be 
interminable. Those sufferings are penalties incurred, not 
punishments inflicted. Nothing but real and disinterested 
goodness can make a man fit for Heaven, and it is 
impossible to conceive how the lost are to attain to such 
goodness. It is not necessary to deny absolutely that 
they may : nor is it necessary to deny that the pity of 
God may put an end to their sufferings and their 
existence together. But there is no trace of either of 
these ideas in the New Testament, and they are hard to 
reconcile with what we know of human nature. We 
seem compelled to think of ourselves as indestructible — 
unless indeed we are to perish like the beasts. That 
which lives on after death must (we feel) live on for ever. 
It would almost seem as if the Almighty in bestowing 
the awful gift of moral freedom had also bestowed the 
not less awful gift of unending existence. These are of 
course only ideas, intuitions, speculations, having no 
warranty in reason or experience — but they cannot be 
ignored. 

The doctrine of annihilation will never find more 
than a lukewarm and hesitating acceptance even with 
those who might expect to profit from it most. That 
God should take the souls of the lost to pieces and 
use them up again in some other form is the dream of 
a poet; a dream which seems to stand out of any con- 
ceivable relation to human nature as we are conscious 
of it in ourselves, or as it stands revealed in Scripture. 
It is precisely the personality of the man, be he good or 
evil, which is for ever insisted on : a personality of which 



256 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

he cannot rid himself and of which no power in heaven 
or on earth can rid him : a personality in virtue of which 
God Himself is bound to deal with him (in a certain 
sense) upon a footing of equality. For although He be 
omnipotent and we the creatures of His hand, yet will 
He respect our moral freedom, and respect also (we are 
obliged to think) our personal identity, so as not to destroy 
or confuse it even for our own good. 

Out of all these considerations there emerges therefore 
the one certain conviction that God will never cease to 
love the souls that are lost, will never fail to do His best 
for them. Nay, we may be sure that as He can never 
forget them in their misery, He must suffer with them 
as long as they suffer themselves. Every father's heart 
tells him it must be so. This is itself an unspeakable 
consolation. It can no longer be said that the smoke 
of hell blackens the gates of Heaven. The love of God 
is vindicated: it is seen to be stronger than death, even 
the death of the soul. The whole aspect of the case is 
altered and cleared, as far as God is concerned. 

But on the other hand the outer darkness of which 
our Lord speaks is as dark as ever. Nothing can ever 
take away the effect of His words, or make them less 
suggestive of horror. Nor does what we know of human 
nature and what we are obliged to feel about ourselves 
give the least countenance to those pleasing anticipations 
which commend themselves to so many because they are 
pleasing. 

The end of the matter is (as so often) an inability to 
come to any certain conclusion. There are reasons of 
the greatest weight which draw us in diametrically opposite 
directions. It would be easy to give ourselves up to the 
domination of one set or the other. To balance them 
one against another, with any hope of a definite result, 



THE DESTINY OF THE LOST 257 

is impossible. That God will always love the soul He 
made in His own likeness is certain. How far that soul, 
in its freedom and in its separate personality, can defy 
His love is the problem which we have no means of 
solving: only in this dreadful contest all the analogy of 
this life is on the side of the soul. 



EXCURSUS IV. 

UPON THE CIRCUMSCRIBED CHARACTER OF "THE 
KINGDOM" IN OUR LORD'S TEACHING 

WHEN we come to consider it, this is quite one of 
the most noteworthy features of that Kingdom. 
It stands out in clear relief against the strongly marked 
tendency of all theology to cover the whole ground of 
religious enquiry. That tendency is indeed so rooted in 
human nature, and falls in so naturally with the craving of 
the human mind, that it is unreasonable to find any fault 
with it. "Lord, and what shall this man do" rises in- 
stinctively to the lips. We cannot help wanting very much 
to know how the Kingdom is to deal, in the way of inclusion 
or exclusion, with all the people in whom we are interested. 
We expect an answer, and when we first perceive that no 
authoritative answer seems to be forthcoming, we are keenly 
disappointed, and cast about for any possibility of supplying 
so grievous a want. The history of religious speculation 
has been, to a very great extent, the history of attempts so 
to piece together and to expand and to interpret our Lord's 
teaching as to make it cover the whole field of human 
questioning. These attempts have been made in good 
faith, and with any amount of ingenuity and determination. 
If they have failed, it is because our Lord willed that they 
should, and so formulated His teaching as to make their 
ultimate success impossible. We may approach the subject 
very conveniently along either of the lines indicated in the 

258 



LIMITATIONS 259 

previous notes. It goes without saying (in these days, at 
least) that if people hold to the dogma of the eternity of 
future punishment — for which there is of course so much 
to be said — they are bound to minimize the number of 
the lost. All writers on that side do, from Dr. Pusey to 
Principal Salmond. In order to comfort us, in order no 
doubt to make it tolerable to themselves, they set aside 
vast numbers of mankind as not coming into question, 
and other whole classes as being safe within the mercy of 
God. They assume generally that all Christian children 
will be saved, and commonly that all heathen children will 
be saved too ; that in fine none will be lost who have not 
definitely chosen evil rather than good, and darkness rather 
than light. No one will quarrel with these assurances in 
themselves, but it must be emphatically said that they have 
no express declarations of Scripture on which to found 
themselves. They are mere deductions from what is 
taught about the character of the Divine Being. There is 
not a word in our Lord's teaching which throws any direct 
light upon the future of children dying before responsibility 
begins : nor can anyone even guess when responsibility 
does begin. Every single reference to the great division 
concerns grown people alone, and such grown people as 
have taken sides with Christ, or against Him. It is 
possible to suppose that the parable of the sheep and 
goats refers to the heathen exclusively, and to understand 
that disinterested kindness shown or not shown will be the 
only and decisive ground of eternal separation for them. 
Very few will be able to accept that view of the parable, 
and there is nothing else to appeal to. The case of 
children (and something like one half the population of 
the world dies in infancy or childhood) is not alluded to, 
and cannot be brought (except in an arbitrary way) under 
any rule laid down in Scripture. Two lines of demarcation 



260 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

have been laid down and accepted. St. Augustine taught 
— and Calvin followed him in teaching — that all children 
were elect or non-elect according to the eternal predesti- 
nation of God. The elect go to Heaven, the others to 
Hell — eternally. The Roman Church first accepted this 
teaching with a certain unwillingness, and then abandoned 
it without saying so. Finally it declared that all infants 
baptized go to Heaven, and all unbaptized to Hell. 
Recent efforts to mitigate the horrors of "damnation" are 
very creditable — but do not touch the doctrine itself. For 
all men are born in sin, and are children of wrath by 
nature, and nothing can bring them within the Kingdom 
but spiritual regeneration, and that is only bestowed in 
baptism. Perhaps there is no one that reads this book 
that holds either of the views just mentioned. We do not 
deny the great mystery of God's predestination : but we are 
not going to believe that the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ doomed from all eternity millions of babies to 
eternal pain. Some of the best people in the world have 
believed it, and we should only make ourselves con- 
temptible by indulging in cheap and obvious invectives 
against it : but we are not in the least likely to believe it 
ourselves. We know quite well that no single being can 
enter the Kingdom without being regenerate, and being 
made partaker of the new Life which is in Christ : but we 
are not going to believe that a baby soul is lost for ever 
because the clergyman was five minutes too late to baptize 
it. That again is held by some who show more love for 
souls, whether adult or infant, than almost any others. 
God forbid we should deride or flout their belief: but it 
never can be ours. The obvious fact is that about the 
future life of children, dying as such, the New Testament 
says nothing. We have positively nothing to fall back 
upon but our Lord's known attitude of graciousness 



LIMITATIONS 261 

towards them. It is certain that He took them in His 
arms and blessed them without considering who or what 
they were, and without making any distinction amongst 
them : of such, He declared, was the Kingdom of Heaven. 
Now it is true that the Church, with a true and blessed 
insight, has seized with a triumphant gladness upon that 
one small incident and those few kind words. It is upon 
the strength of this alone that she baptizes all the little 
ones brought to her and declares of each and all that they 
are God's children and the heirs of His Kingdom. The 
Church interprets our Lord's mind as being equally gracious 
and generous towards all infants brought to Him in 
baptism, and so encourages us to have the same confi- 
dence with respect to those who are not brought. Our Lord 
only blessed — could only bless — those actually brought to 
Him : but the blessing they received was reflected upon 
the whole class to which they belonged. 

But however true the insight which has led the Church 
to attach such a profound importance to that one little 
incident and those few gracious words, it remains the case 
that nothing can really be deduced from them save that 
our Lord loves all children, and would have them as near 
as possible to Himself. That leaves many questions un- 
touched. God would have all men to be saved — but all 
men are not saved. It is a pardonable exaggeration to say 
of many children, as the Psalmist does, that as soon as 
they are born they go astray and speak lies. Many indeed 
are vicious as soon as they are anything at all. Our tender 
feeling for them is as often as not dependent upon the fact 
that we do not know what is really in them. The New Tes- 
tament throws no direct light upon the future of children, 
dying. It is necessary to draw special attention to this, 
because the religious poetry and sentiment of the day is 
full of speculations, assertions, assumptions, which have 



262 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

no basis whatever in Scripture. The parables and other 
teachings of our Lord which concern the final issues of 
human life deliberately leave the children entirely out of 
sight, although they constitute half the human race. That 
alone is proof enough that it is not possible to make a con- 
sistent theological scheme out of our Lord's teaching about 
the future. In such a scheme, e.g., it is entirely illegitimate 
to co-ordinate a general deduction from St. Mark x. 14 
with a literal insistence upon St. Matthew xxv. 46. 

Passing now to the case of the heathen, it is certain that 
they and the non-Christians still form the bulk of mankind, 
and there is no direct reference to their fate in our Lord's 
teaching. St, Paul indeed appears to teach that they will 
be judged by natural law, according to the witness of their 
own conscience. We accept that, not only on his authority, 
but as witnessed to by the general conscience and convic- 
tion of mankind. But that throws little or no light upon 
their eternal future. The more we reflect upon the way in 
which heathens do live, the more impossible does it become 
to divide them (in thought) into saved and lost. Here are 
two heathens. Both have lived in the twilight of heathen 
customs and superstitions, and have lived by what we call 
the light of nature. Both have practised the vices which 
were condoned and the virtues which were demanded by 
the moral code of their race. Within the very narrow 
range which custom and opinion left open, one has been a 
little more just, temperate, kindly, than the other. Is it 
conceivable that a difference so slight, so apparently super- 
ficial, should make the difference between eternal happiness 
and eternal misery? Is it in fact possible from a New 
Testament point of view to say anything about their future 
except that it will certainly be affected by whatever in- 
dependent choice they may have made of virtue or vice ? 
We have to remember that in the case of the Christian we 



LIMITATIONS 263 

have the grace of regeneration, of union with Christ, which 
goes deep down into the very centre of his being and pro- 
foundly affects him there. His outward conduct corre- 
sponds — slowly and imperfectly — but still corresponds. 
Even a small outward and visible difference may conceiv- 
ably be the index to a tremendous change within which the 
eye of God can see. But confessedly there is nothing of 
the sort in the case of the heathen. It is only a little 
better or a little worse in the very unsatisfactory life which 
all heathens live. It is equally impossible to believe that 
the heathens generally go to Hell, or go to Heaven. They 
stand, as far as we can gather, out of any assignable 
relation to either. The New Testament gives us no more 
information about their future than about the future of 
children. It seems to be the fact that all our Lord's 
teaching about the final issues of life concerns itself only 
with a small minority of the race — with those, viz., who 
as adults are brought face to face with Himself and either 
accept or reject Him. For the rest we may and do trust 
Him who showed such affection for little children ; we 
may and do trust Him who nurtureth the heathen, and 
everywhere fills their hearts with food and gladness; but 
as to the eternal future of children or heathen the New 
Testament tells us nothing definite, and it is quite useless 
for us to pretend to know. Avowedly there is no revelation 
on the subject but that in Scripture : and that is totally in- 
sufficient for any dogmatic purposes. 

We turn now to another line of approach. We have 
called attention to the emphatic way in which the New 
Testament couples present suffering with future glory. Not 
that the suffering purchases the glory, but that the outward 
suffering is the test and witness of the loyalty, the earnest- 
ness, the whole-heartedness of the inward faith. Our Lord, 
in the Apocalypse, goes the length of saying that He would 



264 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

have people either hot or cold, and of representing Him- 
self as unable to tolerate the lukewarm. That does not 
stand alone. In the Gospels He uniformly speaks of 
salvation as a matter of grave difficulty. Men have to 
strive to enter in at the strait gate; and consequently 
there are not many to be found inside. Moreover "the 
righteous" are in His teaching perfectly distinct and un- 
mistakable. We know them at a glance. If in that other 
world they are divided by a great gulf from the wicked, it 
is only because they are so already in this world. In this 
world the gulf is a moral and spiritual one, but it is a 
veritable chasm. Now the ideal life everywhere depicted 
in the New Testament, with its disinterestedness, -its self- 
abnegation, its necessity of being persecuted, its blessed- 
ness of suffering for Christ, never has been and is not now 
lived by more than a few. A?td it is just those few who are 
invariably contemplated when our Lord speaks of Heaven. 
Is it conceivable that our Lord should ever say, " well 
done, good and faithful servant" to the vast majority of 
Christian people ? The most that can be said for them is 
that they are influenced to a certain extent by Christian 
feelings, and that they are more or less sorry when they do 
anything very wrong. In a hesitating, half-hearted, way 
they choose what is good — provided always it does not cost 
them too much. They genuinely feel the attractions of 
Christ's religion, and yield to them when it does not mean 
really giving up or striving. It seems equally impossible, 
as we think of them, to apply to them either the bright 
side or the dark side of our Lord's picture-language about 
the final issues. We recoil with a certain sense of help- 
lessness and hopelessness from the contemplation of the 
subject as if our Lord's teaching, beautiful and inspiring as 
it is, were out of touch with the actual Christianity of to- 
day. And it seems best to come to that conclusion, how- 



LIMITATIONS 265 

ever unwelcome it may be. Anything is better than dis- 
honest dealing with His words, and they really are not 
applicable to the great mass of Christians. The Heaven 
of the New Testament is for the brave, the just, the pure, 
the loving : for those who have seen the heavenly Vision 
and have surrendered themselves heart and soul to it — or 
rather to Him, not counting the cost, not holding their 
lives dear, not seeking their own, not drawing back. It is 
for such as have really taken up their cross and followed 
Him and not denied His name for any threatenings or 
blandishments of this world. Blessed and happy souls, 
these, whose treasure is in Heaven, for whom to live is 
Christ, and to die is gain. Blessed and happy, God's 
elect, His chosen few, His secret ones, who have made the 
great renunciation, who have learnt the one lesson worth 
learning, who in earth's dark places walk with Christ in 
white, and shed a light of Heaven around them — who shall 
hereafter walk with Him in white, for they are worthy. 
Blessed and happy; for this is the only life worth living, 
a life perfect and balanced and free, beside which any 
other life shows so poor, so paltry, so futile. But the rest 
of us, who are half and half, who make compromises, who 
admire but cannot bear to go all lengths, who pursue with 
some ardour the consolations which the Gospel offers, but 
evade the sacrifices and deprivations it asks for : what shall 
He do with us? It is not possible to imagine what He 
will do with us. To talk of Heaven, as if everyone should 
be welcomed there who is not quite bad enough to be cast 
into Hell, is to play with the solemnest words of our Lord. 
He did not speak of such as we are : and we will not 
flatter ourselves that He did. 

The more then we study His teaching about the Future 
Life, the more astonished we are to perceive how straitly 
that teaching is circumscribed. It leaves altogether out of 



266 THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 

account all the children, all the heathen, and all the in- 
different sort of Christians. We may, if we like, say that 
all these will go to Hell. Or we may say that all these will 
go to Heaven. We are at perfect liberty to do either, 
because there is in fact nothing to direct and therefore 
nothing to hinder us. But to assert either, on the strength 
of our Lord's teaching, is a fraud. For His own wise 
purposes He restricted His view to those people in whose 
life and death, in whose present conduct and future fate, 
the great principles of His Kingdom are clearly and 
emphatically exhibited and vindicated. He contemplated 
those about whom we could make no mistake. All the 
rest — the vast majority apparently — He passes over. We 
cannot really do anything else but pass them over too. 
Whatsoever is right He will give them : we have to be 
content with that. 



INDEX 



Anabaptists, 73-5. 
Antichrist, 215. 
Antinomianism, 48. 

Baptism of infants, 108, 230, 261. 
Birds of the heaven, 68. 
Bohemia, our Lord's relations to, 
131, 171, 195. 

Charity, glorification of, 200, 244. 
Christ, mystical union with, 189 ; 

second coming of, 150-159,214. 
Christianity, hereditary character 

of, 104, 136, 142; sacramental 

and non-sacramental, 91-97. 
Church, as the body of Christ, 

57-68, 76. 
Council of Jerusalem, decree of, 

226. 
Counter-reformation, 87-89. 
Cross, word of the, 19-26, 39, 55. 

Departed,teaching concerning the, 
211. 

Faith, salvation by, 93, 187, 237. 
Fiction, modern, 132, 196. 
Forgiveness, difficulties in the 
way of, 116, 118. 

Garment, the wedding, 139, 143. 

Gnosticism, 42-44. 

God, Fatherhood of, 249, 253, 

256. 
Gospels, authority of, 12. 

Heathen, 197, 262. 
Hermas, Shepherd of, 211. 

Intermediate state, 156. 

Kingdom of Heaven, character of 
our Lord's teaching about, 3-5, 
10, 79, 100, 141, 210, 218, 258, 
266 ; limitations to our know- 
ledge of, 29-32, 80, no, 259- 
266 : time relations of, 6-10. 



Life, eternal, 147. 
Lost, destiny of the, 206, 241- 
257. 

Millennium, 238. 
Man, nature of, 246, 255. 
Manichseans, 50. 
Money, use of, 176. 
Mormons, 48. 
Mystics, 81, 85, 89. 

Needle's eye, 141, 227. 
New Testament writers, intoler- 
ance of, 44-46. 

Old Testament, doctrine of the 
future in, 146. 

Parables, tempers inculcated not 
transactions intimated by, 100, 
102, 112, 125, 171, 176. 

Prediction, absence of definite, 
n, 12, 214. 

Prophecies, nature of our Lord's, 
160, 214. 

Renunciation, the great, 27, 97, 

237, 240, 265. 
Revelation, book of, 165, 215, 

237 ; latter part of ch. vii., 235. 
Rome, Church of, 65. 

St. Anthony, 97. 

St. Augustine, 30, 35, 106, 212, 

260. 
St. Brendan, 208. 
St. James, Epistle of, 18. 
St. Paul, universalism of, 244, 246. 
St. Peter, character of, 121-123. 
Suffering, necessity of, 234, 263. 

Tertullian, words of, 54, 224. 

Works, judgment by, 185, 191, 

193. 
Zulu, religious history of, 47. 



INDEX TO PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE 



Matt. xvi. 25, 26, pp. 23-25, 168- 
170 ; xiii. 3-8, 18-23, pp. 16- 
32, 37-39 ; ibid. 24-30, 37-43, 
pp. 34-51; ibid. 31, 32, PP- 52- 
69 ; ibid. 33, pp. 70-76 ; zfotf. 
44, PP- 77-89; ibid. 45 , 4$, PP- 
90-102 ; 8^k/. 47-50, pp. 103- 
110; xviii. 23-35, PP- m-120; 
xix. 12, p. 27, note ; ibid. 23, 
pp. 227-230; xx. 1-16, pp. 121- 
128; xxi. 28-32, pp. 131-134; 
ibid. 33-43, pp. 134-136; xxii. 
2-14, pp. 137-144; xxiv., pp. 

I50, l62; XXV. I-I2, pp. I67- 

173 ; ibid. 14-30, pp. 174-180; 
ibid. 31-46, pp. 181-218,244; 
xxviii. 19, p. 199. 

Mark iv. 3-8, 14-20, pp. 16-32 ; 
ibid. 26-29, PP- 9> l 7\ ibid. 30- 
32, pp. 52-69 ; x. 15, pp. 230- 
233 ; xii. 26, p. 146. 

Luke viii. 5-8, 11-15, pp. 16-32; 
xiii. 18, 19, pp. 52-69 ; ibid. 
20, 21, pp. 70-76 ; xvi. 19-26, 



p. 157; ibid. 27-31, p. 138; 
xvii. 21, pp. 219-223. 

John iv. 48, p. 220; vi. 53, p. 92; 
xi. 25, 26, p. 148. 

Acts xv. 29, p. 226. 

Rom. xiv. 17, pp. 114, 223-227. 

1 Cor. iii. 13-15, p. 158 ; viii. 8- 

13, p. 224; xii. 12 ff., p. 60; 
xiii., p. 201. 

Eph. iii. 2r, p. 61 ; v. 23 ff., p. 
62. 

Phil. iii. 8, 9, p. 83 ; ibid. 17-21, 
p. 25. 

2 Thess. ii. 3-9, p. 215. 

Rev. ii. 28, xxii. 16, p. 82 ; vii. 
9ff., p. 235; xx. 4-6, p. 238; 
ibid. 12, p. 191. 



PLYMOUTH 
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, PRINTERS 



OCT 18 190S 



6S 









